Back when the coronavirus was considered a global emergency and lockdown was in order, I found myself having to change my library items from physical pick-ups to digital on Kindle. One of them was Little Beach Street Bakery by Jenny Colgan.
It’s a contemporary about a woman, as the title suggests, opening a new bakery in a town she’s moved into. Along the way, she finds herself taking care of an injured bird and getting close to a beekeeper. I found it being the light read I definitely needed at the time.
If you had one, what was it? I noticed that House in the Cerulean Sea by T.J. Klune was often cited as one on BookTube.
Oddly, Station Eleven. It was very surreal. The book focuses more on the characters than the pandemic that drives the plot, but I think that’s why I felt comfort.
I went through all of the Cazalet Chronicles during lockdown. It was amazing.
The Song of Achilles. It was the book that showed up when I needed it to.
The Traveling Cat Chronicles by Hiro Arikawa. I went into it blind, but it was really what I needed at that time. In my top ten.
I read a non-fiction art book called Dada and Surrealism by Robert Short that had a lot of images of art from both movements in the book’s title with writings giving context on the art, artists, and art themselves. It was comforting to see that artists 100 years ago responded to a world around them that was absurd, illogical, and often cruel, with something creative and revolutionary. It was enjoyable to have a book of the art in front of me so I could spend as much or as little time on pieces as I wanted, here and there. It’s not like I could’ve gone to a museum 😅 I also read a beginner’s book on ceramics and a few intermediate books on gardening. Did the gardening, not the ceramics, but focusing my attention on doing things was so helpful at a time when doing things felt hopeless, yet I’d never had so much time to do things.
The Stand by Stephen King. I’ve read it twice before but dove right back in. I just kept thinking “well at least Covid doesn’t seem to be nearly as bad as Captain Tripps” and found comfort in that. I don’t know why.
LOL me too! And it was a good reminder to be a good person and meet everyone with kindness. I paired it with Spillover for a hard science look at zoonotic disease evolution.
I binged on pandemic books and films: The Stand, Train to Busan, The Girl With All The Gifts, Mexican Gothic, Sean of the Dead…
Anything with a contagion in it, I was there for it.
Love me some catharsis.
I watched Contagion multiple times (and reread The Stand) during the pandemic for the same reason.
I liked the parallels between people running and unintentionally spreading the illness and people storming grocery stores for toilet paper maskless
I started The Stand at the beginning of 2020 lol it added such a nice feeling to the creepy factor.
When the pandemic really ramped up I reread/rewatched The Stand and also rewatched Contagion. I was sort of comforted by the fact that it wasn’t as bad as those.
I read a lot of Terry Pratchett. The humor and wit let me ignore the dumpster fire outside.
I read a lot of Douglas Adams and Neil Gaiman when I needed something escapist.
I listened to a lot of Welcome to Night Vale, then bought and read the scripts. “The Glow Cloud” especially has two quotes that really helped me:
- “The desert seems vast, even endless, and yet scientists tell us that somewhere, even now, there is snow.”
- “We may never fully understand, or, understand at all what it was […] But, and I’m going to get a little personal here, that’s the essence of life, isn’t it? Sometimes you go through things that seem huge at the time, like a mysterious glowing cloud devouring your entire community. While they’re happening they feel like the only thing that matters, and you can hardly imagine that there’s a world out there that might have anything else going on. And then the Glow Cloud moves on. And you move on. And the event is behind you. And you may find that, as time passes, you remember it less and less”
The second quote especially hit REALLY different in April of 2020.
I was listening to Night Vale at that point too.
Strange and weird as it is, the Outlander books. I guess it’s because I was reading about a different time period with entirely different troubles. I would lay in my hammock (indoors) with a small portable heater underneath me, all cozied up with pillows and blankets and read book after book. It was a pretty okay time :)
The Raksura series by Martha Wells. I was a huge Murderbot fan but the first time I tried to read the Raksura I bounced off because it was soo different. But then I came to it with a fresh mind and I was hooked. One of the nice things about it the protags are non-human and they frequently sleep by all cuddling up together in a big warm heap. As I was pretty touch starved at that point that really appealed.
I happened to be reading Station Eleven so that was kinda weird
I thought it would freak me out but it really nailed home that even when we can’t see people we leave ripples in their lives, and more to the point that the end of the world isn’t the end of the world
Me too! Have you tried Sea of Tranquility? I really liked it as well
I was reading Spillover by David Quammen, a nonfiction book about zoonotic diseases. The final chapter talked about how the next big zoonotic disease outbreak was likely to be a coronavius. 😬
This is mine!! I started reading it in late February/early march of 2020. I was standing in line at a fish fry reading it on Libby while people around me discussed whether this whole pandemic thing would really be that bad. It felt too real, so I closed it and didn’t open it again for about a year. When I could stomach again, I finished it and felt hope unlike anything I had experienced in a long time
So was I! Such weirdly perfect timing, though. I actually found it quite comforting.
I was reading The Domesday Book so yes, weird and unsettling.
Manner and Monsters audiobook by Tilly Wallace, narrated by Marian Hussey. Such a cozy Jane Austen-esque murder mystery with supernatural/unnatural creatures also a part of society. Very very fun series! Relistening to them right now :)
Untamed by Glennon Doyle
The book theif