What you read on the metro can make all the difference to the ride. It can make it an experience as opposed to something to get through.
Like a good book, you want the metro ride to be an experience, not just a 'ride'. I mean, most days, the everyday ride we must all endure are the norm. That doesn't mean we should give up the fight.
The best books I've read on the metro? Bolano's "The Return" and Gogol's "Dead Souls". I'm sure there are others, but those two are the most recent. They have an appropriateness for the situation other books, for me, don't have.