On a train to JFK a woman sitting across from me is reading the supermarket advertisements from a newspaper. She looks to be in her mid-to-late fifties, and she’s carrying a large purse in her lap. After several minutes of careful perusing she neatly folds the paper and opens her purse. I catch a glimpse of what’s inside: it’s packed with similarly folded newspaper advertisement pages. She pulls the next one out and begins reading it in the same fashion as she read the previous one – cover-to-cover, scrutinizing every advert. Is she shopping, or is this a form of recreational reading? For how long has she been collecting these, and for how long has she been reading them? The questions continue to pile up, as do the ad pages, until I reach my stop at Howard Beach.