Between the Lines

Starred review from August 2, 2021
Cohen, creator of the Subway Book Review, goes underground to New York’s subway system in this rich collection of interviews. A slew of New Yorkers share what they’re reading: LaTonya Yvette at Brooklyn’s Clinton-Washington station reads Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer, which makes her ponder property, ownership, and her relationship with the land she inhabits, while Shea Vassar discusses her Indigenous identity at the 45th Street Station through Crooked Hallelujah by Kelli Jo Ford, and Ellie Musgrave in Prospect Park reads M Train by Patti Smith and photographs her way through the city. Well-known train-riders pop up from time to time, including author Ta-Nehisi Coates, who was caught reading Ill Fares the Land by Tony Judt, an author he calls a “huge inspiration”; Roxane Gay, who reads her “favorite novel,” Edith Wharton’s The Age of Innocence; and Momofuku CEO Marguerite Zabar Mariscal, who says that Rules of Civility by Amor Towles “transports you to an homage of New York in a really cinematic way.” With a genuine curiosity for the city’s wealth of perspectives, Cohen’s interviews show how deep a person’s connection to a book can go; after all, she writes, “books are a reflection of our identities and souls.” Literature lovers will relish this insightful compendium.

September 1, 2021
What New Yorkers read. Making an appealing book debut, Beutter Cohen, a documentarian and creator of the Subway Book Review, gathers excerpts from more than 160 conversations she had while riding every subway line in New York City. The subway, she writes, is "the city's beating heart that never stops." When she noticed someone reading, she became an inquiring reporter, asking why they had chosen a particular book, eager to learn about them as a reader, and she also took photos of each person holding their book of choice. Themes of race, sexuality, the environment, food, power, history, art, music, home, love--and living in New York--emerged as widely diverse readers talked about an equally diverse selection of books. "I saw bestselling novels, experimental poetry collections, self-help books brimming with sticky notes, provocative memoirs, and well-loved classics," Beutter Cohen observes. The books mostly fall into the category of serious literature, no matter what genre. Nancy Bass Wyden, owner of the Strand bookstore, was reading Roxane Gay's Hunger. Beutter Cohen noticed Gay herself at the 23rd Street Station in Manhattan, reading Edith Wharton's The Age of Innocence, which, Gay says, is a novel she has read at least seven times. Singer/songwriter Sophie Auster discussed Memories of the Future, by her mother, Siri Hustvedt. A reader who identifies as nonbinary chose Virginia Woolf's Orlando. Some readers Beutter Cohen met are immigrants, and their choice of books reflected feelings of exile and loss. A young woman from Southern India, living alone because her husband was deported, found comfort in Vivian Gornick's The Odd Woman and the City, which spoke to her own loneliness. Qween Jean, a self-described "Caribbean goddess," read Yaa Gyasi's Homegoing ("hella Black, hella feminine, and hella powerful"). Some readers were transplants from other parts of the country, as is Beutter Cohen. "A small town girl from Germany," she lived on the West Coast before moving to New York in 2013. A list of the books mentioned is appended. Delightful encounters with passionate readers.

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Starred review from October 1, 2021

When Cohen moved to New York City in 2013, she wanted to hear every resident's story but few people had time to share. Then, she writes, she discovered the subway--"the beating heart of the city"--and found the connection. Cohen traversed all five boroughs and every train line, meeting and talking with passengers. Her conversations with people reading on the train were documented on an Instagram account (@SubwayBookClub) and now in this book. Cohen photographs readers on the train and at stations and asks about books they're reading, but it becomes so much more than that thanks to the author's intelligent, sensitive questions and the famous, semi-famous, and absolutely fabulous reader-riders' replies. In loosely grouped chapters (Trees; Matriarchs; Space; Old New York; Reality), subway readers share their hopes, sorrows, and joy with Cohen, opening a portal into their lives. A complete reading list is included. VERDICT A vibrant, varied love note to New York. Readers will feel hopeful after hearing from Cohen's delightful subjects, and perhaps emboldened to engage a stranger in conversation.--Liz French, Library Journal

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