Changes in My Reading Life during this Pandemic

Among all the huge changes in our lives during this coronavirus crisis, there are some smaller but still important, to me, ways in which the virus has changed my reading life. First, I want to clearly acknowledge that these are small and insignificant in the larger picture. But here on my book blog, speaking to others who love to read, I want to share these changes. First, as I briefly mentioned in my 3/19/20 post, since libraries and bookstores are closed, if I want to read new books (beyond the ones already in my home), I need to order them. I have been ordering books from local independent bookstores (who are still “open” online), and this process makes me so happy. First, I feel good about supporting these wonderful bookstores, especially now when their businesses have been hit so badly. Second, it is such a treat, such a lift to my spirits, when these books are delivered to my door. These beautiful new novels (mostly 2020 books) are now forming a lovely stack on my “to read” shelf. Second, my husband and I are longtime subscribers to and readers of our local newspaper, the San Francisco Chronicle, and reading the paper with our morning coffee is a cherished ritual. But now we wonder if the physical newspaper, delivered to our door every morning, could be a carrier of the virus. We are wary. Should we spray it with alcohol? Leave it to sit for a while before opening it up? So far we have done each of these, at various times, inconsistently. We could decide to just read the paper online (as I already do with the New York Times and the Washington Post). But we love the physical newspaper on newsprint, and don’t want to give it up. We also want to support the press in general and the Chronicle in particular with our subscription dollars (which of course are more than the online price, but worth it…). A third change is that I am – more than ever – uninterested in reading anything even vaguely dystopian. It is not a favorite genre for me anyway, but occasionally I have liked (besides the classics such as “1984”) a novel such as Emily St. John Mandel’s excellent “Station Eleven” (about which I posted on 3/15/16, noting that the reason I liked it was that besides its description of life after a pandemic (!), it did what all good novels should do: focus on characters and relationships. Today, in a book of short stories, I encountered a semi-dystopian story, and felt an almost-physical revulsion; it is a little too close to home these days. Fourth, my reading of novels and other books has been strangely influenced by the current restrictions, in that when I read about a party, or friends meeting each other on the street and shaking hands or hugging, or kids playing on swings and slides in a park, or other actions that violate social distancing or rules of scrupulous virus-era cleanliness, my first instinct now is to say “NO, NO, don’t do that! That’s dangerous!” Of course these books were written in pre-virus times, back in the old days of a few months or a couple of years ago or earlier. But my immediate reaction of worry and fear is instinctive, not logical.