January 31st, 2020

​Reading through it all


The Corona virus is declared a global emergency, NY Times Cooking posts a game-day Jalapeño poppers recipe, and apparently, Taylor Swift is Scathingly Alone.

Those tweets wrap around the Impeachment hearings that today go far beyond the surreal territory of the some of the world’s best future fiction. The hearings, at best, perhaps are a lesson in unreliable narrative twists. The constant disruption and distraction will continue. Getting free of it takes work and it is never really completely successful. Or could it be? Perhaps only be in extreme isolation and that possibility today is attractive.

My strategy for getting through pain, change, distraction, and disruption has always been to read. I made a commitment to myself late last year to cancel my Netflix subscription and to limit television. There is only so much time and so many books and very little moral justice to go around.  

After that decision serendipity struck when my friend Lucianne recommended I read Louise Penny’s Gamache mystery series.  I read all 15 books once and, then, read them again. It was pleasurable reading filled with complicated justice, artists, gardeners, poetry (she had permission from Margaret Atwood to use her poems), community, wonderful bistro food, and the world of French Canada, Québécois. I love being in the hamlet of Three Pines with her mature, flawed, loving and quirky characters. These books carried me through a hard time and was healing.

So now, I am writing another book.  No Chief Inspectors however, although one never knows.

Since I’ve extended my reading pledge, I want to stop my Amazon book purchasing habit and move to solely purchasing from independent bookstores. And for that I needed an eReader; one with warm light for night reading. Yes, I love physical books but I write in a shed that is overwhelmed by books,  type writers, art supplies and an antique iron single bed for reading—always occupied by my dogs. I  decided on a Kobo eReader, the one used in other countries on this planet.  Not only does it have direct integration with my library for books, but also I can choose my independent bookstore purchases at the Kobo store. My old Kindle became my virtual book shelf since the Kobo Libra H2O just arrived.

And having said all this, UPS also delivered two new hardcover books by Olga Tokarczuk.

My next blog post no doubt will be my gushing tribute to Olga.

​But for now, breath in, breath out.

Jacqueline