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.
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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.
The Wind-up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami! It was the first book I read in the pandemic, and I remember the intense escapism was really crucial for me during those times. Murakami is always a wonky ride, and Wind up Bird is what got me into his writing!
Not Hot Zone which I decided to read week two of lockdown.
More so midway through rather than at the start of the pandemic, but Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush by Tim Key.
It’s a book of comedic poems about his experience during the first wave of lockdowns and his process of writing the book itself.
I started reading some standalone gothics like Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier and DragonWyck by Anya Seton
Something about the whole “young girl goes to this estate where everything isn’t as it seems” was really attractive to me. The Netflix show Haunting of Bly Manor also came out around then so I was watching that as well.
I’m typically a fantasy reader so it was a break from the stress and emotional angst that the real world was already going through. Sometimes people are just batshit crazy and i enjoyed trying to figure it out with the MC in those books!
Agatha Christie. My brain was distracted, the murder got solved, something bad happened to the bad guy, and usually someone fell in love.
I immediately started reading the Percy Jackson series. I’d had it forever and never opened it before but I knew younger fiction was going to be soothing.
I also was mid-reread of the American Girl book with a podcast I was listening to and I doubled down on that.
Then as things went on, I got obsessed with romance books. I did hit some Jenny Colgan here too.
Then as things really went on, I got obsessed with WWII resistance and homeland literature.
Then when I lost someone to Covid, I became obsessed with reading fiction and nonfiction about grief and death and pandemics.
And now I’m just really obsessed with escaping through reading.
I’m sorry for your loss.
Untamed by Glennan Doyle was amazing during that time.
I was trying to deal with the pandemic, then my Dad passed away at the end of 2020, and to cope I read a lot for awhile. I just happen to be in a bad reading slump now lol.
The Agency series by Y.S. Lee was very comforting for me. It is set in 1850s London, and follows a young woman who works for a spy agency… there are 4 books in the series, and I really enjoyed reading them.
I also really enjoyed Circe/The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller, Black Sun by Rebecca Roanhorse, and Ruth Ware during that time period as well.
I went through all of the Cazalet Chronicles during lockdown. It was amazing.
I read a book on Mr. Rogers’ life.
I read Imaginary Friend by Stephen Chobosky, and I found it to be strangely comforting. I needed an escape, and it worked.
Good Morning, Midnight by Lily Brooks-Dalton
A Song For A New Day by Sarah Pinsker.
It’s about a post-pandemic world, coming out and connecting with people again. It was nice to think about the light at the end of the tunnel.
It’s didn’t comfort me at all but I spent the first 3 months of the pandemic reading The Stand by Stephen King