Wednesday, April 08, 2020

COVIDiary: So Many Books, So Much Time

Forget that tee-shirt that says: So Many Books, So Little Time. Seems now we do have time.

I was that stereotypical reader-kid who early on figured out how to pull the covers up over the light clipped to my headboard, allowing me to read way past my bedtime. Nancy Drew, Hardy Boys, little Laura Ingalls, the March girls, Mary Poppins  - all kept me up at night. By the way, I'm sure I fooled no one re: reading under the covers.

My aunt Nell was an inveterate reader, too. Books were always everywhere. When I was a teenager - and long before Nell's death in 2013 - I asked her to leave me all her books and record albums (that's a story for another day). She had no children of her own, just a lot of nieces and nephews who camped out at her apartment in Orlando during the summer, so she was glad that at least someone had laid claim to a part of her legacy.

Most of the books I inherited from Nell I'd never read, since they were from the 1950s-70s when we were reading very different things. But now in isolation for the foreseeable future, with money tight, and reading material more important than ever, I've started diving into these oldies but goodies.

So far, I've gone through Steinbeck's The Winter of Our Discontent, Rebecca West's The Fountain Overflows, and Louis Auchincloss's Portrait in Brownstone. They transport me to an early- to mid-20th century world that's out of sync with our current "Stay Home" directives. They're all about movement, going places in the world, in society, in business. No one's staying put.

God bless Nell and her books. God bless characters that remind me of movement in the world. God bless the relief that great writers give to readers during unusual times. God bless the lessons we learn from them.

1 comment:

jcburns said...

Hi Mary, it's nice to see that you've turned (back) to this method of expression as one vibrant tool in the toolbox for getting through the craziness. Me, I've done the much the same, having promised myself I would post once a day WITHOUT FAIL since roughly January 7. Just wanted to leave you some encourgement ("keep it up! you're doing great!") and I'm raising a virtual glass of Tab mixed with Root Beer to getting together with you in person some day when the world has re-changed, or settled, or morphed into something entirely different than this.