Has the pandemic affected your reading preferences too?
Here is something I realized recently. Over the last few years, very subtly, my reading list , and perhaps, preferences had changed. My reading list comprised memoir, discovery, biographies, psychology, history, geopolitics, the Ted talk books ,autobiographies, medical humanities, technical pieces (especially medicine), even poetry, but really very little of fiction.
The fiction books that I had picked up were largely kept in waiting or read slowly in parallel with the others.
As a result, my TBR list had grown enough to merit starting a separate notebook (or maybe I needed an excuse to buy notebooks, given that I love collecting them!?)
I would try to organize it and wade my way through the list, check them out in bookstores and download a few onto Kindle. And then return to my world of nonfiction!
Then, confronted with the reality of a tiny virus and a huge pandemic, I suddenly found myself craving fiction. I seemed to be desperate for the comfort of fables and stories, concoctions of good and bad, redemption and deprivation, which , at least, had a definite end in sight. I longed for a world crafted for me, where someone was in control. Maybe the cushion of an imaginary macrocosm would also buffer the shocks that reality was throwing at the world in general?
As the uncertainty and precariousness introduced in our lives by Covid-19 continues, so does this feeling.
Is anyone else feeling this too?
I find myself returning the long-neglected TBR list, and like a devout book lover, buying more titles, even without finishing the previous ones!
While fantasy would be the obvious choice for such an escape, I have not been too much of a fantasy reader for almost two decades now.
Instead, I seem to be finding my solace in the seemingly unrelated genres of crime and romance!
After years, enjoying comfort fiction, with comfort chocolate, and comfort coffee!