Over a month into quarantine, we’re adapting to this strange new indoor routine and finding quality reading time where we can get it. As we turn to cookbooks, picture books, bucket-list reads, novels in translation, and old favorites, it’s a good time to make a reading list. Here’s ours—below, we’ve shared a piece of our lives and the pleasure we got from our recent favorite reads (and TBRs). Find them all here on Bookshop, which sends profits directly to independent bookstores.
Of the many endless things I miss from pre-quarantine life (PQL), my daily commute is at the top of my list. Not because anyone loves being on a packed L train at rush hour or the reliable unreliability of the G, but because it’s the two hours of my day solely devoted to reading. I’m trying to maintain that sacred allotment of minutes (minus the jostling elbows and conductor announcements), but I also just got my friend’s brother’s ex-girlfriend’s beach house’s Hulu password, so I got sidetracked (recent Killing Eve convert here—Villanelle’s wardrobe!).
First quarantine read was The Memory Police—nothing like reading about the slow erasure of mind, body, and soul during self-isolation (picked up on my last PQL visit to one of my locals, Topos Bookstore). Figured I’d continue with the emotional upheaval and finally got around to the thoroughly enjoyable Conversations with Friends (borrowed PQL, from a friend, with whom I have not yet conversed about this book). Currently thirty pages into Virtuoso, and I. Am. Hooked. Next on deck is either the much-buzzed-about Hurricane Season (cannot wait) or Garden by the Sea. Thank you Riffraff for the speedy delivery of those last three!
Quick Mercè Rodoreda PSA: Death in Spring.
I’m looking forward to getting back to our office so I can get my hands on the Marie NDiaye bundle I bought from Two Lines Press PQL right before shelter in place went into effect (still kicking myself for shipping to work and not home). Currently in my Bookshop cart: Breasts and Eggs, This Little Art, and The Unwomanly Face of War (don’t @ me with the 5G conspiracy, I know). And for all the cat people out there, I’m going through my back issues of PUSS PUSS.
—Alison (Assistant Editor)
I like reading cookbooks like they’re straight up normal books (cover to cover) before I start cooking from them, and even then sometimes I’ll go back just to see what my friends (recipes) are up to and what might speak to me. Lately, I’ve been reading a lot of cookbooks.
Last night I made the house black daal from Dishoom: The First Ever Cookbook from the Much-Loved Indian Restaurant (both a fantastic series of UK Indian restaurants and the name of the accompanying cookbook). It took four hours, and if that’s not a perfect snapshot of how I’m spending my time right now, I’m not sure what is. The week before I soaked chickpeas in English breakfast tea for 24 hours to make chole bhature. I picked up the cookbook from Daunt Books in London, so it has ingredients listed by weight (the best way to both bake AND cook, in my opinion) and UK spelling, which I’m currently finding delightful.
I’ve also been making my way through Adeena Sussman’s incredibly accessible Sababa: Fresh, Sunny Flavors from My Israeli Kitchen (highlights: Broccoli Cottage Cheese Pancakes, Labaneh, Melted Green Cabbage, Mushroom Arayes with Yogurt Sauce), which I got last year, but it has the ideal combination of weekly rotation recipes and one-off special projects. And of course Nothing Fancy: Unfussy Food for Having People Over from Alison Roman, who convinced me to cook with anchovies and what can I say? Like most of my friends I just really like all of her recipes… Why are more people not talking about the Fancy Citrusy Olives?
With more indeterminate indoor time to come, last week I ordered Susan Spungen’s new Open Kitchen: Inspired Food for Casual Gatherings from Bookshop, so new friends (recipes) and reading material are on deck.
—Arielle (CFO)
I finished The Corner that Held Them by Sylvia Townsend Warner right when lockdown started. It's about a convent in the fourteenth century. There’s not really a protagonist. And there’s not much of a plot. Events just pile up over the years—the plague comes and goes, a prioress dies, someone runs off with the horse. But the opening scene is one of the best I’ve ever read, and then I just raced through it. Sylvia Townsend Warner was a genius! She's one of those mid-century female authors who was astonishingly brilliant and somehow (well, we know how) remains under the radar, which is a crime. I got my copy from the Brooklyn Public Library. <3
When Yiyun Li announced that she would be hosting an online War and Peace book club with A Public Space, I bought a copy from my local, Terrace Books. Curbside pickup was still happening at that point so I got to walk over to retrieve it in person!! Heaven. I'm in no way keeping up with the gentle pace of Tolstoy Together, but War and Peace is really great (you heard it here first).
I've also got The Apparitional Lesbian by Terry Castle on my nightstand. It's a revelation, though I'm not exactly tearing through it right now. But the last movie I saw in theaters before quarantine was Portrait of a Lady on Fire, which includes an actual apparitional lesbian; so I guess I'm keeping it close by for sentimental reasons.
The book I’m actually reading is Tender at the Bone, Ruth Reichl's first memoir. During lockdown I think about food and almost nothing else morning, noon, and night, so a young Ruth Reichl discovering tarte aux fraises as a counselor at a summer camp on an island off the coast of France some time during the last century is going down easy right now.
—Christine (Assistant Publishing Manager)
I started my quarantine life a little bit stunned and in search of answers. And like I always do when something challenging happens to me, I turned to literature and fiction. I thought Severance by Ling Ma would be an uncanny read. When will I again be able to read a book about a New Yorker experiencing the worst case scenario of a pandemic while living in New York in the midst of an actual pandemic? A bit risky—will I get a panic attack while reading it?—but it ended up being cathartic to find a character I could identify with during these times. Even more enjoyable was the overall satirical tone and reading about a world where capitalism crashed.
For a similar uncanny experience, I would recommend playing the board game Pandemic. (Don’t worry folks, we did save the world on round two).
However, if I were to spend all of quarantine reading about pandemics, I would go mad. So I then turned to Normal People by Sally Rooney and it was the perfect raw and real millennial coming-of-age romance novel I needed to forget all about the outside world and retreat to a pre-quarantine one.
Then I decided to read The Consolations of the Forest by Sylvain Tesson, a book about the author’s six-month retreat in a cabin in the middle of Siberia—which I now realize means I’ve been alternating between quarantine and non-quarantine themed books… It’s an Into the Wild–type narrative, where the author (along with his seventy books and endless quantities of vodka) takes the time to reflect on nature, silence, solitude and happiness while portraying the challenges of life in the Siberian wilderness.
Now, I’m planning to read Conversations with Friends, Sally Rooney’s first novel, hoping I will love it as much as I did Normal People!
Side note: Like probably a lot of us, I did re-read passages from the Harry Potter series every time I couldn’t concentrate on something else but wanted to read a page or two before bed. Always a soothing read when you need to take a step back from adulthood and regress a little bit!
–Ghjulia (Intern)
Isolation has its benefits; I don't feel guilty confessing that I thoroughly enjoy it. Part of me has always wanted to be a hermit; I have now been granted the chance. These days I find time to be on my side, not fleeing away, even though I still finish the day with a sensation of unfinishedness. Thanks to COVID-19, more than reading I have been rereading: Borges' volume of lectures, Seven Nights (1980), in particular the one on blindness; four volumes of American poetry, two focusing on the nineteenth century, and two on the twentieth century, published by the Library of America; two essay collections by Edmund Wilson, one from the 1920s and 30s and one from the 1930s and 40s; various tomes of the Babylonian Talmud, which I follow not from beginning to end but like a frog, jumping from one leaf to another; Shakespeare's last plays, especially Macbeth, Hamlet, and The Tempest. The list, I know, looks stuffy; it doesn't matter to me. I'm at an age when I am attracted to "proven" books, not only those that have survived the test of time but books that, when I finished reading them long ago, I remember having a sense of companionship. By the way, I have also been watching inordinate amounts of Spanish-language telenovelas, from Frontera Verde to La Casa de Las Flores. The most daring, innovative aspects of Hispanic civilization are to be found in them today. There is a drive toward perfection in the telenovela tradition that is utterly hypnotizing.
—Ilan (Publisher)
I’ve always enjoyed reading a graphic novel along with a book of fiction or nonfiction. Quarantine has given me the amount of quietness and time I need to focus on the literary works that I’ve been putting on my list. Being able to indulge myself in good stories until 4am without worrying feels genuinely satisfying.
This month, I’ve been reading a lot about women. Carmen Maria Machado’s Her Body and Other Parties and In the Dream House have led me to explore women’s interiorities and haunting scenarios, and to discover an exit to all the dark experiences one can have in a relationship.
Shifting to a lighter read, I’ve personally been indulging Lucy Knisley’s cartoonish, intricate drawings in Kid Gloves: Nine Months of Careful Chaos. It radiates very positive energy in recognition of women’s bodies awaiting birth. It’s one of those books that points out what we’re still able to enjoy when we’re overwhelmed with day-to-day concerns.
The Body Papers by Grace Talusan (published by Restless!) was a meaningful throwback to memories back in Asia. The contrast between the East and the West, the city landscapes, and what it’s like to travel back and forth from both cultures, makes it a fascinating read on a rainy thunderous afternoon. I spontaneously joined one of her online readings, glad that the shelter in place has actually pulled the literary community closer in some ways.
The Lie and How We Told It by Tommi Parrish navigates queer desire, masculinity, fear, and complexity of friendships. Drawings take over the pages, which makes it an interesting yet not-as-loaded read (it’s out of print, according to the publisher’s website, but the author’s debut Perfect Hair is on Bookshop). And Letting It Go by Miriam Katin immerses me in her memory, tracing her roots in Europe after the Holocaust. The detailed sketchings of the emotional drive, the thin colorful lines, and the slow pacing has brought an immanent peace to my mind.
—Jenna (Intern)
Quarantining with a toddler means that my reading list has mostly consisted of picture books about fire trucks (which really means every kind of truck). So Digger, Dozer, Dumper is big as well as Busy Fire Station. We’re also working on talking about our feelings with Grumpy Monkey (I find it very therapeutic to yell, “I’M NOT GRUMPY!”).
When I have time for my own reading, I’ve been immersing myself in the New York of a different time with E.L. Doctorow’s World’s Fair. On my to-read list is Haruki Murakami’s Killing Commendatore, which I’ve been saving for a beach vacation, but I think the time has come to savor it at home.
—Jodi (Production Manager)
In between trying my hand at cultivating new hobbies (crocheting, playing the guitar, and making lots and lots of focaccia bread), I’ve made sure to spend some quality time with my favorite objects: books.
I’ve been trying to escape this current reality by reading a depiction of life as we used to know it, with Brandon Taylor’s debut novel, Real Life. Within its first few pages are delicate, evocative descriptions of the moments I’ve been craving most: sitting around crowded tables with friends, platonic (& stolen!) kisses, and in general, plenty of touching. I’m a touchy-feely person, okay!
Before starting that, I read Milan Kundera’s Ignorance–lots of talk about nostalgia (apt) and emigration (which is… distressingly on hold at the moment)–and Jenny Offill’s Weather, which felt like reading a devastating, yet funny Twitter thread about the good, the bad, and the ugly, of everything taking place in our country these past few years.
—Kylah (Intern)
My colleague Arielle heroically brought me back from London the hefty UK edition of the third volume of Hilary Mantel’s Thomas Cromwell trilogy, The Mirror and the Light, just as the lockdown was beginning, and I didn’t get the chance to get the book from her. So, I’ve been slogging it out in the Tudor trenches with the audiobook, superbly narrated by Ben Miles. The magnificent first two volumes, Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies, each end in a beheading (#spoileralert, #history), and I’ve still got a dozen listening hours left until this one’s inevitable ending. RIP TC.
Otherwise, I’ve been eyeing the interminable TBR pile for books that seem weighty enough to merit the moment and/or buoyant enough to escape it. Next up will be Yuval Noah Harari’s Sapiens and/or Patrick O’Brian’s Master and Commander.
—Nathan (Editor and Marketing Director)