Things I read while mostly holed up in my bedroom

Today is the tenth day since I developed COVID symptoms, and even though I am only 75% of the way through it I am eating dinner with the family like a rebel. 

I have been thinking so many thoughts about Friday's decision and the reactions to it, but none of those thoughts are ready to be aired at this point. So instead I am going to tell you about the books I read in isolation. (As usual, these are affiliate links.)

COVID book #1: Under Heaven. One summer when Joe was looking around for something to read, I suggested Tigana. He loved it, and then he and Pete got way, way into Guy Gavriel Kay. They've both been telling me for a while that I should read more Kay. I had bought Under Heaven during a Kindle sale, and last Sunday after my positive COVID test I was grateful for a different world in which to immerse myself. I enjoyed it -- enjoyed the characters and their relationships and following the imperial machinations. Last Sunday I was chatting about it with Joe via text and I said: "It's probably hard to write about women in that era in a way that’s rooted in history but also doesn’t come across as 'she’s pretty smart for a girl!' The powerlessness of the women was difficult to read about." 

I had no idea just how much I was about to be reading about women and power.

COVID book #2: Crazy to Leave You. I can't remember the last time a book left such a bad taste in my mouth. I'm not linking to it; don't buy it. Don't even borrow it. It's ostensibly about a woman who gets left at the altar, but it is actually about the way that a lifetime of immersion in diet culture will break your brain. I am not amused these days by humor that hinges on the reality that when grown women restrict themselves to a daily caloric intake more suitable for small children, their bodies push back. It could have been funny. It tried really hard to be funny. But these days I am firmly of the opinion that no one else gets a vote on how my body ought to look, and too much of this book smacked of self-loathing rooted in impossible expectations.

Huh, I also had no idea just how much I was about to be reading about women and their bodies.

COVID book #3: The Great Believers. Best book I've read this year. It had some personal resonance for me, because it is set in Chicago and Evanston during the very years when I was living and working in those same parts of Chicago and Evanston. You will probably not read it and say, "I bet that's the laundromat on Halsted where I used to wash my clothes!" (unless we used to be neighbors), but I think that if you read it you will be gripped by the characters and their stories of living in Boystown between the mid-80s and the early 90s, when AIDS was widespread and almost uniformly deadly. This is the thing I kept thinking: where was the Church? If we really believe we are called to go to the margins and serve the vulnerable, it seems in hindsight like a clarion call to serve people with AIDS. There is nobody more vulnerable than a person whose immune system has failed him: his own body ceases to fight on his behalf and the whole world teems with threats against which he no longer has functioning defenses. And yet when this particular disease hit that particular marginalized community, the US Church as a whole did not say, "Christ has no body but ours; let's go! Unto the least of these; let's move!" The characters in this book do not say to themselves, "You know who is sure to offer me compassionate assistance? The Catholics, that's who." Unsurprising, and yet...

Wow, I ALSO had no idea just how much I was going to be thinking about strategies for protecting the vulnerable and marginalized.

COVID book #4: Wish You Were Here. I borrowed this one because my mom recommended it enthusiastically. There's a twist in the middle that I didn't like, and I spent the second half of the book feeling annoyed about it. The descriptions of the early days of the pandemic were evocative, but I am lukewarm about this one. And if I think too much about the ending, my bibliothermostat dips below the lukewarm range. Gotta say, though, I'm glad I got COVID in year 3 of the pandemic and not in year 1.

COVID book #5: What We Wish Were True. As soon as I finished the library's copy, I bought my own copy and a copy to give away to a friend. Tallu Schuyler Quinn died in February of an aggressive form of brain cancer, leaving two young children. She was the founder of the Nashville Food Project. She wrote at length about the gifts and limitations of life in a body, as she was watching hers come undone, and she wrote too about her own movement from an emphasis on charity (doing for the poor and marginalized) to an emphasis on justice (doing with them). Even if this were not a particularly critical time to be thinking about charity and justice, and the gifts and limitations of life in a woman's body, this would be a book to come back to.

Comments

[Slim]

I love book reviews that include reviews of books I already have an opinion about (The Great Believers). Off to get some of these and avoid others.

[Penelope]

I read and loved What We Wish wish Were True.

Have you read or heard of Hidden Mercy: AIDS, Catholics, and the Untold Stories of Compassion in the Face of Fear, by Michael O'Loughlin (pub 2021)? I'd like to read it; I've got it on my wishlist ... my library hasn't got it.

[Nicole MacPherson]

That is a really on-point list of reading. I have had The Great Believers on my list for a while, I should probably bump it up.

I HATED Wish You Were Here. Hated it. I know I'm in the minority, and it could have been my headspace at the time, but I had such a negative reaction to it. I will say, in its defense, that it was interesting to read about the early stages of the pandemic. It's kind of easy for me to forget what it was like, how terrifying it was, and how new everything was.

[Meredith]

Just finished Tallu Schuyler Quinn's book and regret that I never worked with the Nashville Food Project (I'm local.) Remarkable woman.

When I think about Catholics who were there during the AIDS crisis, this is one area where Fauci should really be honored, and I knew nothing of his work until critics used it against him in lockdown. He went to the margins when few would.

[Jody]

I've been stalled out on The Great Believers for a while, not because it wasn't wonderful, but because sustained attention to text is periodically quite challenging for me, the school librarian. Sigh. I will move it back to the top of my list (and probably have to start over, sigh again).

I have heard wonderful things about The Sentence, which happens to be set in my home metro area. Perhaps it is the pandemic-era novel we are all looking for? If I can give myself permission not to finish the dozens of books downloaded to my three airplane-mode kindles of various vintages, I might buy it and report back.