September 18, Thursday night -- Reading Dean Koontz

In the Financial District, guarding a building near where I work
Reading Strange Highways, by Dean Koontz. It's this job, and other jobs like these, as a guard, at night, that got him into reading in his early twenties. Before, he didn't read at all, though he remembers liking To Kill a Mockingbird. When you're working during the day, he said, it's frowned upon to read, but at night, it's okay. While we were talking, a couple of painters left the building to go get dinner. They didn't care if he was reading. His favorite book -- Neuromancer, by William Gibson.

What books have characters who talk like you talk?

I'd left work late, and the guard in my building was reading, too, though, for some reason, I feel uncomfortable taking pictures of people reading while working if they're at my work, like my boss will be upset with me or I'll have violated some sort of company code. Anyway, the guard, a woman about my age, was excited about an upcoming trip home to Philadelphia where her little brother was getting married and, feeling reminiscent of her hometown, and the cheese-steak sandwich she'd get when her flight landed at nine p.m., she was rereading the second book of a vampire series set in Philadelphia, by L.A. Banks. She's read the series a couple of times, but it hasn't gotten old. She was raised where it's set and so she gets it. It makes her laugh out loud because the characters talk like she talks. Even though she's not a vampire. She reads at night...not the alternative.