The Wannabe Covid Books

Maybe you have caught on to what is going on with me these days. It’s been almost two months since I first became ill with some crazy virus (?) that had all the symptoms of Covid-19 but tested negative the two times that I checked. The doctor that I dragged myself in to see felt that I indeed had covid and proceeded on that assumption in his treatment recommendations. Ugh. I slowly recovered from the initial illness, but I didn’t get better. Fibromyalgia! declared my rheumatologist. We’re treating that and I am getting better (I can now get up and do stuff around the house for a couple of hours at a time. This is huge!) because I can finally read and write again. And knit! I am finally able to knit several times a week now as long as I give myself a recovery day or two each time because all my tendons hate me, evidently. Never mind, this is progress, people!

Anyway, I’m writing again. I have so many blog post ideas that I’ve been mulling over during my down time… fasten your seatbelt, here comes another!!

Unable to sit up for more than a half hour, and unable to concentrate enough to read, I spent my down time burrowed under the covers, flanked by neglected cats, binge watching online shows and listening to audiobooks. I listened to some really great books during this time! I’ve been mulling over how to talk about them for the last couple of weeks, and I have to admit that my choices and reactions to these books are influenced by my covid/fibromyalgia state when I listened to them.

Kind of an eclectic mix of books, right? There is a kind of nebulous theme going on, though, if you are willing to cut me a lot of slack. Each of these books is about people in a closed and isolated community making sense of their situation, creating workarounds that let them function in spite of formidable obstacles, and emerging in the end with some type of closure.

Tom Lake: It is the lockdown. It is also apple picking season at the family-owned orchard. All three girls in the family have come home, and the mother tells them all the story of her early life as they struggle to get the crop in with limited help from workers because… lockdown. All the drama of their lives is rehashed and worked out as the mother recounts her early years as an actress, her involvement in a summer theater company at Tom Lake (and her involvement with a budding actor who would go on to fame), and the decisions that she made that led her to this life in an apple orchard. This is a book about isolation, choices, values, and ultimately the power of women.

The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store: Wow. Imagine, if you will, a marginalized community called Chicken Hill that is made of intersecting Jewish and Black families. Imagine, if you will, clever strategies to outmaneuver the powers-that-be in order to flourish in a world where you are considered to be a powerless second-class citizen. Imagine characters who will steal your heart, break your heart, and then heal it right up again. Imagine the good guys winning in the end, and the villain of our story getting his just deserts. Imagine a great book. This is it.

The Running Grave: Cormoran Strike and Robin Ellacott are at it again. They’ve taken on a client who has worried concerns about a son living in a non-traditional religious community. Unable to contact the client’s son directly, or to understand what is really happening in this closed society, Robin goes undercover and enters the cult while Cormoran works other aspects of the case from the outside. Oh, boy. This is really, really scary and tense, and absolutely unbelievable and believable at the same time. The beliefs of the cult are frankly outrageous, but at the same time you suspect that it might be possible that something like this actually happens. Closed off from the world, living with the cult in a closed compound, Robin spirals down, pulls herself together, manages to get to the bottom of things, almost dies, escapes, and if you want to know the rest you have to read the book. This was a good one.

Crook Manifesto: I just want to say that I am in utter awe of Colson Whitehead’s command of language. Seriously, I just wanted to copy down all the utterly fabulous mental images that he invoked: perfectly captured, but also peppered with dark humor. Okay, now that I’ve gotten that out of the way, we are off to early 1970s Harlem to go on adventures with Ray Carney: family man, furniture store owner, former fence, and an upstanding (retired crook) member of his community. The book, like the one before it (Harlem Shuffle), is told in three parts. There’s a story dancing in the background as the reader journeys the three loosely connected parts of the book that involves self-identity, worth, and coming to terms with the past in a way that is meaningful.

Defiance: I’ve been reading this science fiction series for decades now; this is the 22nd book about humans living in a segregated community on an inhabited alien world with one chosen interface/diplomat between the two species, Bren Cameron. This is an intense sociopolitical story that covers a few days in the lives of an isolated group of characters as they attempt to put down a rebellion, ensure the safe resolution of a crisis on a space station overhead, and transition leadership responsibilities during a confusing communications blackout and a concealed agenda by one of the major players. It’s a ride. If you like tricky overthinking about political and social implications with the possibility of violence around every corner, this is the book (and series) for you.

So, there are my books of wannabe Covid. I’m now functioning better with less brain fog and dizziness, but the extreme fatigue and painful muscles/joints goes on. Tonight my right knee has decided that it wants to just lay around and watch shows all day.

Time to look for another good book. And maybe some chocolate. 🙂