R is for...

Reading

Reading is a large city on the M4...no no no , reading. Oh I see.

Before I moved to London I had never heard anything positive about the London Underground, beyond the fact it was a very famous part of the city. It was all 'oh it's horrible: smelly, hot, noisy, expensive, late, bombed, delays, crowded...' and on they went, reeling off all the hardships I would face.

What I have discovered though, apart from some of the above being partially true, is that the tube is also a fantastic place for reading. A mobile library if you will. Albeit a noisy, smelly, expensive, crowded, often delayed one. Get a good spot though, where you can turn pages without the risk of flying into the person next to you when a driver is a touch over-zealous with the use of his brake pedal, and you can devour a book in a week as you shuttle your way under London.

My 25-30 minute journey each morning and evening gives me a solid hour of reading time each day. There's only so long you can re-read the poems on the underground collection - speaking of which why are so few of them ever about London or the Underground - so if you stick in some headphones and to block out your fellow passengers, you can read away until your stop arrives. Twice this year I've managed to miss my tube stop due to being so engrossed in the pages. Having mentally believed to be at Green Park, when in fact we were at Victoria, I found myself having to alight at Stockwell and head back to Pimlico.

I really wanted to come up with an underground/book pun for this (alongside the R is for... bit), but failed. Any suggestions?