JUST BROWSING

C train at 135th Street, 9:30 a.m.

The blue bag balanced on her lap was packed full of health care administration textbooks and homework, but Deborah Hairston, who works in the cancer unit at NewYork-Presbyterian/Columbia hospital was using her commute to peruse the catalogs that stuff her mailbox each week.

“Sometimes I find things I want to buy, but most of the time I am just browsing,” she said, paging past a display of bead-embellished Chadwicks cardigans. “I don’t want to read the news or get involved with anything too heavy. I have enough of that in my life.”

A PAGE A DAY

B train at 96th Street, 10 a.m.

To learn the Talmud, many of its students read one of its 2,711 pages each day. And it helps to have a chevruta, or study partner. Harry and David Zinstein, brothers from Washington Heights, generally conduct their Daf Yomi  page of the day, in Hebrew  study sessions en route to work on the Upper West Side.

Except on Wednesday, which turns out to be a kind of day of rest for Harry, the elder of the two Zinsteins at 28. A manager at Mike’s Bistro, a kosher restaurant on West 72nd Street, Harry Zinstein forgoes his subway Talmud study those days to read the Dining section of The New York Times.

“It’s the only thing I read on the train except for the Talmud,” he said, his thick, leather-bound Babylonian text tucked inside his messenger bag for later consumption. “And it’s the perfect length for the commute.”

David Zinstein, 19, who is studying in Israel but spent the summer working for his brother, sat to the right, reading his Aramaic tractates (with English translations). “I always read the Talmud on the subway,” he said. “Even on Wednesdays.”

MULTITASKING

A train at 23rd Street, 12:30 p.m.

Donalay Thomas is the kind of reader who creates a private space for herself among the multitudes, whether she is squashed by the door or has a whole row of seats to herself. With her iPod earbuds firmly in place (“On the Ocean,” from an R & B album by K’Jon) and a thick hardcover (“Resurrecting Midnight,” by Eric Jerome Dickey) open on her lap, Ms. Thomas, head down, can zone out and leave the world behind.