A Year in Reading: Richard Brody

In the past few decades, my years in reading have been nearly coextensive with my years in riding: most of my pleasure-reading has been done on the subway, commuting to and from work—and when there’s reading I want (or need) to do on weekends, I’ve often done it on the subway to nowhere, arbitrary destinations where I’ll walk around a little before getting back on and reading my way home. The pandemic put an ongoing pause to optional subway trips (unavoidable necessities only) and, because I’ve been working from home since it started—at first, all the time, and, now, most of the time—I get less time to read.

For me, the best reading isn’t quiet time, it’s the virtual sound of voices, and that’s why I like to read in busy places, not necessarily noisy ones but definitely not quiet ones. Voices, in quiet