I don't know whether you feel the same way but I have always been very self-conscious about the books I read. The axiom 'Don't judge a book by its cover' should be slightly amended: people shouldn't judge the reader by the book he reads. But let's face it. It's very easy to draw conclusions about a person based on what he reads.
There was one night when I was a student and I was seated on my bunk on an overnight train which would take me back to the city where my school was. I was a reading a thick book while waiting for the train to depart. A few elderly people came into my carriage to see off an elderly woman who was occupying the bunk next to mine. One of them saw the book I was reading and immediately, his lips spread into a huge smile and he greeted me as a 'brother in Christ'. I soon learnt that the elderly woman was a missionary who had gone to some God-forsaken country to 'preach the Word of God'. It was the cover of my book that identified me as a 'brother in Christ'. My book was a theological study by Leon Morris which had just been given to me by my super-religious brother. It was impossible for me to tell them that I was not at all religious and I was only reading the book because my brother gave it to me before we parted and it was too thick and it took up too much space in my luggage and it made more sense to carry it with me and read it. I knew that if I had told them that, they would have felt disappointed that I wasn't what they thought I was. Soon the woman's friends left the train and the train left the station and the elderly women regaled me with stories of her missionary work which really didn't interest me at all.
For me personally, the worst thing about reading in public places is the inevitable advertising to the world what book it is I am reading and that unavoidably leads to my being judged by the cover of my book. Even an innocuous book by Albert Jack on the origin of common English phrases attracted a comment from someone I barely knew. He asked me if I was reading a book for children only because there was a cartoon on the cover.
A long time ago, I would wrap the cover of my books with brown paper but a friend told me that people only did that to pornographic books!
This is why the Kindle is probably the greatest invention since sliced bread or since the rice cooker was invented. In this simple gadget, I have a few hundred books which I can read without being judged. There is a book I'm currently reading in my Kindle which many people will judge as a sure indicator that I am a recent convert to Islam. At the same time, there is another book I am also reading that will get me branded an Islamophobe.
Salman Rushdie was one of my favourite novelists in my younger days. When one of his novels got into trouble with the Ayatollah, I remember having a tough time reading it in public places. I had to put it on my lap so nobody could see the cover.
And to think that there was a time when I rebelled against electronic books and I was so sure I could not possibly read a book without physical pages. Today, I feel a lot more liberated. The Kindle has no book cover for people to judge you with.
