Treasure Hunting for the Favorite Books of Berliners
photo: Jule Müller
What books do Berliners like to read? I guess you could easily look up at some sales statistics from Dussmann or other giant book stores, but you would not get a good result. Because we all know that a lot of sold books will have the poor faith of ending up as an unwanted present to somebody who rather scrolls through Instagram in his free time (poor book).
But if you really want to know what books Berliners love to read you have to look around in a special public area: the U- and S-Bahn. Because, either you hate it or love it, but the Berlin subway is definitely a display of Berlin’s variety, showing you the most interesting and sometimes the most horrendous people, attitudes and behaviors Berlin has to offer.
My friends from Blogfabrik Judith Poznan and Jacob Schickler decided to look out for the more interesting kinds of human behavior and instead of asking what beer people on the U8 were spilling on the floor the decided to look into which books Berliners were reading. In her former past Judith was a hot book-shop-employee (which is the soft version of a hot librarian) and is an expert on books. This passion, her editorial skills and Jacob’s love and talent for photography brought them to create the Facebook Page Behind Berlin Books where they regularly share portraits of strangers with their books and their stories.
If you ask me, approaching strangers on the subway and asking them what kind of books they are reading and letting them tell you more about it (under the disguise of a journalistic project of course) is a hell of a flirting tactic, I should definitely include it in my guide How to get to know your U-Bahn Crush.
We collected a couple of shots for you to get a taste for the project.