COVID Days: Twelve Books To Read Now.

By Erica

At first, I was addicted to my computer. Email and Zoom connected us. Museums provided images and theatre companies provided words to feed our souls. Master classes in everything from the city’s architecture to leadership. News 24/7. Webinars on COVID and political campaigns and just about anything else imaginable. Not to mention streaming services and new wonderful shows popping up every day. We have time. Why not? I dove in. 

But now I am finding myself stepping back. It’s too much. I am trying out a new regime, saving my screen for the late afternoon and evening hours. And what am I doing instead? First, of course, now that the weather is cooperating, I am spending more time outside. Masked, of course. But I am now spending more time just reading, more intensely with less grazing, trying to find understanding, comfort, satisfaction. Books and magazines (for me, in hard copy) are providing what the internet alone does not. 

Seems like others are thinking the same thing. Just look at the week’s top sellers on Amazon:

1. White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard For White People to Talk About Racism

2. So You Want to Talk About Race

3. We’re Different, We’re the Same (Sesame Street)

4. How To Be An Antiracist. 

Here’s what I just read:

1. The Way We Live Now by Anthony Trollope. A 800 plus page satire about life in the late 1880’s, corruption and money. Mmmm.

2. If You See Me Don’t Say Hi, by Neel Patel. Short stories by a young Indian writer that challenge stereotypes of all kinds. Evocative, provocative, and funny all at the same time. They strike a chord.

3. The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides. A psycho thriller. Well written and fun.

4. The Most Fun We Ever Had by Claire Lombardo. Set in Chicago, the story of a  normal (i.e., mildly dysfunctional) modern family beginning with a 1970’s marriage and covering the next 50 years. More fun.

5. Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson. Actually reread. The death penalty, its brutality and inequity  and what Stevenson is doing about it. Read his recent interview in the New Yorker too. 

And here’s what’s next up:

1. Queenie by Candice Carty-Williams. The story of a Jamaican British female journalist trying to figure it all out, what she wants to do, who she wants to be.

2. Dominica by Angie Cruz. A  story about a young Dominican woman moving to New York and growing up.

3. The Windfall by Diksha Basu. A kind of Jane Austen comedy of manners about an Indian family in Delhi who strikes it rich.