Furlough leads to more reading
Among the 800,000 furloughed federal employees and those affected by the government shutdown, there’s a cycle of now-familiar feelings that circle like tenacious hawks. Among them: Uncertainty. Frustration. Anger. Powerlessness. Fear.
And, for some, an equally tenacious desire to keep reading.
I started noticing the trend in my own home, where my husband, furloughed federal employee Adam Wendell, has been burning through books at a startling pace. It’s a good alternative to checking Twitter every 10 minutes to see if the shutdown has ended, he said.
Before being furloughed, he’d been reading the Dresden Files series, by Jim Butcher, and had finished the first five of the 15 over four months. Since the shutdown began, on Dec. 22, he’s finished nine more — no, make that 10 as of today. For purely nerdy purposes, we calculated: That’s over 4,000 pages in 28 days.
Aside from filling his days with books he had already planned to read, it’s also helping him sleep at night.
“It keeps me from worrying all the time,” he said, “so I only worry part of the time.”
While local library systems have a hard time determining whether recent upticks in checkouts are due to the shutdown, bad weather or other factors, Arlington County in Virginia has noticed a pronounced increase in its e-book and e-audio circulation from January 2018 to January 2019. Although there’s typically a jump of between 1,000 and 3,000 titles, this year it’s closer to 12,000.
“Thank goodness for books right now,” said Stacie Chapman, a Marylandbased survey statistician at the Census Bureau. “They are the only thing keeping me half sane!”
The shutdown has increased Chapman’s reading pace and broadened her horizons. Usually she’s a “250- to 350-page book girl,” she explained, but with more time on her hands, her books are getting bigger. She recently finished “Obsidio,” the third in the Illuminae series, by Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff, which is more than 600 pages long.
The fantastical series is particularly appealing at the moment.
“Reading takes me away from reality, and the reality right now is awful,” Chapman said. “If I’m reading, I’m not refreshing the news or Twitter and getting angrier and angrier. Instead I stay nice and relaxed.”
Chapman has always been a voracious reader, but her January totals are astonishing: She’s finished 29 books so far this month, sourced from the public library, her personal stash and Kindle Unlimited.
“That’s abnormal, even for me,” she said.
In Oklahoma, Barb Mayes Boustead, a meteorologist instructor with the National Weather Service, is also filling her extra time with written words.
“I have a stack about 12 books deep on my nightstand that have been queued for a while,” she said. Among the books she’s either just finished or working through — all gifts — include “Educated” by Tara Westover, “Boom Town” by Sam Anderson and “Winter in Paradise” by Elin Hilderbrand.
“When I’m working, I might squeeze in a chapter or half chapter at bedtime, if I’m lucky, and not every day can I manage that,” she said. “These days I can get a little more, though I wish I had time to just sit and read a book all day. I have not had that day yet.”
But that could change if the shutdown goes on long enough.
I have a theory for why reading, especially reading genre fiction, offers solace beyond simply filling up extra time: There’s always an ending, and it’s satisfying. In genre fiction of every stripe, you can be confident that problems will get solved. When something terrible happens, there’s resolution, retribution or both. Those who seek to harm the vulnerable will be brought to justice or, at the very least, rendered impotent.
“The happy ending is pretty much guaranteed,” Chapman agreed. “Nice change from what’s going on in the world.”