Finding escape in between pages
Howis everyone doing?
I ask because by now, it seems as though we’re supposed to have adjusted to our “new normal” of life in a pandemic. Are you adjusting? How?
Are you happywith these adjustments? Some ofmy personal adjustments have been positive. I can now go to the grocery store without panicking because almost everyone is masked.
Others are less positive. For example, there is something that happens to men as they age where one’s eyebrows and ear hair growin increasingly uncontrollable fashion and at a speed that defies sense. One day there is nothing, and the next it is as though Peter Cottontail is attempting to escape fromyour ear, butt first. When I was regularly interacting with the public, I would tend to these small, but necessary grooming rituals.
Now, what’s the point?
My reading habits have also evolved over time. Back in April, I wrote about how difficult itwas to concentrate on a book, and others wrote in to say theywere experiencing something similar. I identified the cause as grief, with the complicating factor that itwas a grief with nowhere to find purchase or expression. Itwas grief without healing.
The subsequent months have found me reading with more pleasure and greater focus, very much back tomy old habits, which is a relief.
Apparently, I’m not alone. Print book saleswere up 2.8% in the first half of 2020, according to NPD Book Scan. While the economy is in recession, book sales are doing just fine, particularly whenwe consider that nonfiction categories like travel titles have dropped off a cliff, sales-wise.
Sales of juvenile and young-adult titles are way up, perhaps because of a need for enrichment outside of schooling— not a bad idea even in non-pandemic times. Even adult fiction increased by almost 3%.
All of this is good news. When so much seems to be imploding around us, to see that publishing is doing OK is heartening. As usual, there are more good books than I have time to read. My to-be-read piles have reached their previous heights as well.
It is a relief to be able to reclaim this part of myself.
On the flipside, I am concerned about allowing my vigilance to slip as I find comfort in books. These are still discomforting times. To solve the problems the country is facing will take great and sustained attention, not just fromour leadership, but from each one of us as individuals.
To some degree, it is the very gravity of the news that is now driving me to read more for escape. Arecent story that hundreds of thousands of migratory birds were found dead in New Mexico sent me lurching to theworld of fiction to get away from the news.
By itself, itwas not the most troubling news of the day, but something inmy brain said— this too?— and declared that enough was enough.
The danger of adjustment, perhaps, is in internalizing a sense of powerlessness. I can’t do anything about hundreds of thousands of dead migratory birds. Howmuch are we expected to deal with?
It may be OK to let my ear hair get a little untidy. It is not OK if our Western states burn, our Midwestern states flood, and our coastal communities drown. It is not OK to see our democracy threatened both internally and externally.
Hopefully savoring my moments of escape will giveme the strength to continue to engage.