[forgive the bad camera work. This was taken while I was standing in a jolting Metro car with a cell phone camera!]

So, I’m back down here in Crystal City for the Computers In Libraries Conference (cherry blossom time again!) and I was on the Metro on the way to the hotel when I noticed an interesting ad on the wall of the car. It was for a newly released book called Drood by Dan Simmons. It’s a work of historical suspense fiction that takes the position that Charles Dickens went around the bend after his wife died and delved into the most unseemly parts of London by night, and possibly committed foul acts.

We received a pre-pub copy at the library a few months ago after reading the first chapter and being unimpressed by the style of writing, I put it down. But I really thought it interesting that the publisher is taking out ads on the Metro. Now, DC is a cultured city, if you go by the advertising in the area: plays, social causes, museums and also books. The book ad surprised me, though, because you don’t expect to see them on a train. But then, lots of people read on the Metro so what better place to catch interest?

P.S. I have a habit of trying to nonchalantly look at what people are reading as they are riding. Yesterday I saw a man in his late twenties reading Revolutionary Road (the movie-tie in paperback with DiCaprio and Winslet on the cover).