Pandemic Awareness Suffuses My Reading

These days of “shelter-in-place,” I am reading more than ever, partly to distract myself from the pandemic. But I find it intrudes itself even as I read novels and memoirs published well before the coronavirus crisis. For example, there is an occasional reference to a virus, an illness, a health crisis, a hospital stay, and I feel a chill. Even when books don’t directly mention anything to do with illness, I instinctively -- at least for a millisecond -- recoil from scenes in these books in which people sit or stand too close together, at restaurants or parties, or in parks or classrooms or theaters. I find myself wanting to call out to caution the characters: “Don’t do that!” "Stay home!" "Remember to “social-distance!" Or “Don’t sip from the same glass!” Or "Did you wash your hands?" Or “Don’t open that package or letter without wiping it down with alcohol, and/or leaving it unopened for a day or two first!” These reading experiences remind me that even if we are fortunate enough to be in relatively safe situations, as my husband and I are (working from home, able to stay in a comfortable home, getting groceries and other supplies delivered, etc.), we are all vulnerable (we, for example, are now -- like it or not -- defined as “seniors” and thus more vulnerable), we are all on high alert, sensing danger everywhere. We all feel the profound weight of the uncertainty, pain, and loss that surround us.