Reading in the time of Covid

 

Well after two years avoiding Covid, being super cautious, working from home, wearing masks and being fully vaccinated our luck finally ran out and we both caught it.

Luckily we weren't too ill but at the very start when I found my concentration shot and my inability to read/remember what I'd read I was taken back to the months after my brain hemorrhage and it wasn't very pleasant at all.

My (fortunately temporary) inability to read doesn't seem to have affected my ability to buy and acquire books and the postman has been a little busy. The good (?) thing is that post Covid I am still really suffering from fatigue so I'm not feeling too guilty about curling up on the sofa after work and just reading.

Also helping to relieve the guilt is knowing that all of the books I've brought are from independent publishers and ordered through independent bookshops!

I have now finished Lesley Parr's When the War Came Home as recommended to me by Kentishbookboy's mum and I though that this was a brilliant read - it was so nice to read a book about the First World War that wasn't just about the fighting but had the focus on what came next for those returning from the front and those who'd held everything together on the home front.

Next up as a recommendation from Kentishbookboy is When The Sky Falls by Phil Earle which has made it on to the short list for lots of book awards, including the 2022 Yoto Carnegie Medal. I have been warned I'll need tissues for this one so perhaps I'll save it until I'm fully recovered!

Micro Review 23

 

Quarantine Comix by Rachael Smith (Icon Books)

eProof from Net Galley

I am sure that in the next few years there will be a plethora of books using the Covid-19 Pandemic as a plot device but for me Quarantine Comix is the first I've read and I loved it.

I'd not come across the cartoons on social media over the past year and I am not sure where I saw this mentioned (my already wonky memory seems to have not enjoyed Lockdown 3) but I am glad I put a request in for the book.

While I was lucky enough to be with my husband and to keep working throughout the past year so much else of Smith's comics rang true to me. She really has captured the boredom, fear, weirdness of time as well as the wonder of nature & small things just as I experienced them. (I would just like to reassure my family who read this blog and might find the book too that Mr Norfolkbookworm & I didn't drink as much as Rachael and her housemate, nor did we drink at such odd times of day!)

Thinking on this book further, and discussing it with a friend who also got access to the early copy, I've come to the conclusion that this book had such resonance for me because like the author I was lucky that no one in my close circle appears to have caught the virus  - although there were family losses from other causes that were exacerbated by Covid.

This book is all about the fears and 'what ifs' of the past year and not the actual illness itself - for that you need to read Michael Rosen's Many Different Kinds of Love. 

When it comes to 'souvenirs' of this odd time I'd definitely include this book in a time capsule - it is just how I recall 2020.