Word Under the Street

Word under the street, TTC book reviews, public transit, book reviews, subway book reviews, commute, books,

Lexi Pinheiro, 22, in TV production

  (Geoffrey Vendeville / Toronto Star)
  (Geoffrey Vendeville / Toronto Star)
  (Geoffrey Vendeville / Toronto Star)
  (Geoffrey Vendeville / Toronto Star)

Book:Lux: Beginnings (Obsydian and Onyx) by Jennifer L. Armentrout

Stop: Dupont

Pinheiro hasn’t outgrown her love for young adult novels. When she goes to the bookstore, she finds herself perusing the teen section.

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“Even though I’m getting older, I can’t seem to get into the older books . . . like the books my mom reads,” she said.

She loves romance novels, which take up most of the room on her bookshelf. She’s re-reading the Lux series, about a woman in West Virginia who falls in love with her next-door neighbour, an alien from outer space.

“It’s interesting,” Pinheiro said.

Jennifer Robinson, 30, criminologist

Book:Duty: The Life of a Cop by Julian Fantino with Jerry Armenic

Stop: Yonge

Robinson was aghast when the Star’s subway book reviewer didn’t recognize the man on the cover of her book.

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“Please tell me you know who that is,” she said.

She (barely) accepted the reporter’s sorry excuse that he is from another province, explaining his unfamiliarity with the former London, York Region and Toronto police chief and one-time federal cabinet minister.

In his 2007 autobiography, Fantino describes his immigration to Canada from Italy as a boy, his beginning in law enforcement as a street police officer and rise to top cop.

“The cool thing about it is that, as a criminologist, I get more of the theory, but this gives insight into the practical,” Robinson said.

Sayjon Ariyarathnam, 21, law student

Book:Private Vegas by James Patterson

Stop: Queen’s Park

Hard work has paid off for Ariyarathnam. He recently finished his undergrad and plans to start law school this fall. In between, he’s interning at a downtown law firm.

He gave up trying to study from finance and law textbooks while riding the subway. He now uses his 45-minute commute to decompress.

One recent Monday, he lost himself in Private Vegas, a 2015 suspense novel about a private eye trying to solve a string of murders. The book came recommended by a friend, who found it while emptying out his cottage, Ariyarathnam said.

“I wasn’t too happy with the character development. It just seems to be the cliché, here’s the good guy and here’s his evil brother,” he observed.

Naya Paloma, 34, actor

Book:One on One: The Best Women’s Monologues for the 21st Century edited by Joyce E. Henry, Rebecca Dunn Jaroff and Bub Shuman

Stop: Yonge

It’s been years since Paloma last read this compilation of women’s monologues, from the work of more than 70 playwrights since 2000. She is trying to memorize a few to keep in her back pocket for her weekly acting group meetings, she said.

She won’t be performing some of the monologues she bookmarked the last time she read the collection.

“I feel like I’ve changed and my attachment to certain pieces is very different,” she said. “Some of the ones I performed, I’m like ‘That’s not me anymore.’”

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