Journal of the Plague Year 3-18-2020

Books to read while self-isolating

Happy Spring! The evidence of spring in the Land of 10,000 Swamps is reduced piles of frozen, dirty slush. It’s raining instead of snowing or sleeting. I will take it. Even Mitzi the Cat, who sleeps 23 hours a day from November to March, is beginning to show some interest in going outside, if only for a few minutes. 

The virus has shuttered lots of services and businesses. Our credit union has drive-up and ATM services only. Restaurants, including chains such as Red Lobster and Domino’s Pizza, have switched to takeout only. OLGS has a part-time job at the Target Center, home of the Minnesota Timberwolves. The Wolves are no longer playing, so he is no longer working.

In addition to TV watching and decluttering (an aspirational activity, to be sure), I am returning to my attempt to learn Hungarian. That should be a full-time job. Hungarian is up there with Mandarin as one of the hardest languages to learn. It’s the challenge rather than the utility that keeps me at it. If I wanted utility, I would study Spanish.

I have not abandoned reading. In the run-up to self-isolation, I finished Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead. It’s a sobering, beautifully written story about a juvenile detention facility in Florida. He also has a book about New York City, The Colossus of New York, that I would like to read next.

Our recent trip to New York inspired the purchase of two collections of essays, Leaving New York and My First New York. Sadly, the books are ultimately unsatisfying to read, because most of the essays were written by people who first arrived in the city in the 1990s. There are only a few that touch on the terrible years in the 1970s when OLGS and I lived there. Is it a sign of age, or walls closing in, that makes me prefer books that speak to my own experience?

If I get tired of the books on my bedside table, there are many hundreds more on bookshelves around the house—books that I always intended to read but did not. Depending on how long this lasts, I may get to them. Then again, I might not. There’s always Netflix.