Millions of people do. If you have ever ridden on New York City's subways, Washington's Metro, San Francisco's Muni or Boston's T, you have seen fellow riders engrossed in reading. You've seen students reviewing their lessons and recent immigrants wrestling with an English as a second language text. You've seen a kind of mobile field of dreams. You've also seen people reading bestsellers and Bibles.
Many riders use the quiet time to just think or pray.
Now the hucksters want to call a halt to this. They just can't bear the thought that somewhere in America, people might be doing something constructive and not looking at their ads. They have designed the TV's so that riders cannot turn them off or even turn them down. Americans today lead hectic lives. They don't have much quiet time for reading, and we should treat the little that remains as a precious national resource.