Introduction

Abstract

A student reads her textbook in preparation for a class, while another passenger, engrossed in the music on his personal music player, casually reads the advertising hoardings inside the train’s compartment. One passenger is occupied in reading the business section of a bought broadsheet paper, reading perhaps for profit, while another picks up a free copy of a daily tabloid left behind by an earlier reader, to while away the travel time with trivial entertainment. While one commuter reads a downloaded short detective story using a 3G mobile phone as an e-book reader, another uses a smart phone to access a social networking account and contribute to a discussion about a book read recently by a friend, adding inexorably to the wealth of collective and individual responses to reading available on the Internet. Reading for information, a couple of tourists board the train clutching their guide book and consulting a map, while a local reads and responds to a series of SMS messages, perhaps sent from another location or time zone far away. One passenger is reading their way through a lengthy nineteenth-century novel in daily, sequential instalments, while another discontinuously reads a seemingly random section of a holy book, offering themselves a thought or prayer for the day.