When we sheltered from COVID-19 in March of 2020, I took for granted I’d be staving off cabin fever by reading some of the many books from my never-ending list, but it didn’t exactly work out that way. Those months turned out to be very much like dealing with the death of a loved one, and instead of feeling energized by voluntary captivity and freed to pursue any and all interests, I found myself in grief mode, focus lost, drifting with the hours. I did try repeatedly to get into a book, but after the third or fourth romp through a paragraph I had to drop it every time.
Sometime this spring my damped-down psyche woke up and said “What’s to read around here, anyway??” and it’s been a steady parade since. OMG, welcome home, my BFF, I missed you like deserts miss the rain, please don’t do that again, ‘k?
Since once again becoming [TRIGGER WARNING: Buzz word] “woke,” I’ve read:
She Come By It Natural – Sarah Smarsh
The Year She Left Us – Kathryn Ma
11/22/63 – Stephen King
A Widow for One Year – John Irving
Women Talking – Miriam Toews
The 19th Wife – David Ebershoff
In the Distance – Hernán Díaz
American Woman – Susan Choi
After the Fire – Henning Mankell & Marlaine Delargy
All the Beautiful Girls – Elizabeth J. Church
The Beekeeper of Aleppo – Christy Lefteri
Alice I Have Been – Melanie Benjamin
Among the Missing – Dan Chaon
The Atomic Weight of Love – Elizabeth J. Church
The Bean Trees – Barbara Kingsolver
Current read is Billy Bathgate and the jury is still out, but all of the above I would recommend without hesitation. I’ve likely managed to leave out a few, but the joy is that I haven’t been without a book underway in months, and that’s progress I can respect. We’re in the thankful season, and I’m deeply grateful that good books are still part of my daily life, and that the thrill of aging and the joy of reading are still friends.
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Playing for Time 
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