Reading During a Pandemic

It's been a while since my last reading update, although I have a list of five finished books to write about at some point. In the week since we have been banished to our homes for yet another lockdown, this one due to COVID-19, I have been somewhat distracted and had trouble reading much of anything. But here are some thoughts about what I'm reading.

During our last period(s) of distance learning, I abandoned my read-alouds, even though I consider reading aloud to my students one of the most important things I do as a teacher. But this time, feeling a little more comfortable with the tools we're using to send and evaluate our students' work, I decided to record the readings. I'm enjoying it, and the feedback from the students has been...well, OK, I don't expect feedback from my middle schoolers, but at least there hasn't been any negative feedback. I am requiring my students to keep reading, and to write to me about what they are reading, and let's just say that their choices run the gamut from classic to...not. At all. So at least when I am sending them chapters to listen to, I ensure that there's some quality literature in their lives.

Here's what I'm reading with my students. In seventh grade, we are finishing up Seedfolks, by Paul Fleischman. I had planned to finish it our last day of school before going to distance learning, because we were going to do that last Monday, but then the government shut schools down by a decree Thursday night, so I had four chapters left. The chapters in this book are very short, and each is in a different voice. There are only thirteen chapters in the whole book. Ironically, the book is about coming together, focusing on a community garden in downtown Cleveland. Tomorrow I'll send out the last chapter, and we'll be done with that book. I'm not sure what we'll read next, but maybe Peak, by Roland Smith. (I wrote a post last May about teaching that book.)

In eighth grade, we are reading The Running Dream, by Wendelin Van Draanen. This is about a girl who loses her leg, and over the last couple of years of teaching it, I have collected a bunch of YouTube videos that go along with it, which I am now sending online for the kids to watch. We're not even halfway through this one, and the students were getting invested in it, and I think it's appropriate to read about struggle right now. After we get done with this, I want to try teaching my favorite unit, on a retelling of the Iliad and the Odyssey, The Trojan War, by Olivia Coolidge. I'm not sure how I will condense all the song and dance I usually do into an online presentation, but my husband has had some success with using ShowMe, and he has promised to, um, show me.

I've been reading aloud to my husband; we usually have a book on the go, and the one we're in right now is The Street of a Thousand Blossoms, by Gail Tsukiyama. Here's a passage we read this morning, about Japan in April 1946:

"Still, every day after the firestorm Haru went outside, a scarf covering her face and mouth, her hands bandaged, hoping the world might have returned to the way it was. In her mind, she played I See, a game she and Aki had played as small children. I see a cat . . . , she began, which was followed by Aki's I see a cat with black, black eyes . . . I see a cat with black, black eyes and a long, bushy broom tail . . . I see a cat with black, black eyes and a long, bushy broom tail that sweeps the floor . . . It went on and on until Aki couldn't remember any more and became silly, or gave up, her attention already focused on something else.

Haru looked at the devastation around her. I see a world covered in gray ash. I see a world covered in gray ash with flecks of white bone. I see a world covered in gray ash with flecks of white bone of all those who will never rise again . . . She walked around the sumo stable seeking signs of life, thinking in her twelve-year-old mind that not until she found it would she believe things could return to normal."

As in past crises in my life, I find it oddly comforting to read about people going through worse, and triumphing, or at least surviving.

I've also been reading The Gospel of Trees, by Apricot Irving. This is a memoir by the daughter of missionaries to the north of Haiti. It's well-written and unflinching in its look at the challenges of trying to help people.

I've been reading Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk, by Kathleen Rooney, for a while now. I'm enjoying it, but somehow have not made much progress on it. I just get distracted so easily these days.

Here's another one I pulled out for inspiration this morning.

I was writing letters to the parents of my students, and wanted to do some of them in French. Perhaps needless to say, this book wasn't much help.

I had a conversation with a friend on another Caribbean island earlier in the week about, among other things, A Gentleman in Moscow, by Amor Towles (which she just finished, and which I read twice in 2018). Since this is a book about a sudden shrinking of someone's world, it seems very appropriate for right now, and my friend thought so, too. At the end of our discussion, I thought about checking it out again from the library. I also have read some in Doomsday Book, by Connie Willis. This one might be a little too on the nose; it's about a woman time traveling back to the middle ages (Black Death, anyone?) during a pandemic in a future setting where time travel is a common reality. And I started The Second Sleep, by Robert Harris, without knowing what it was about. This one might be a little too on the nose as well, but I definitely want to finish it someday, because it's fascinating so far.

I will still blog about the books I finish, including, I hope, some of the ones in this post. What are you reading? What's perfect for a pandemic?