Sunday Reading

Any season is reading season, but outdoor reading season is obviously the best, followed closely by indoor reading season. I’ve discovered that having a cat can actually be motivation to read: company, the impossibility of getting up when a cat is on your lap, his insightful and thought-provoking comments.

Many of the readers in my life have expressed the various influences the pandemic has had on their reading life: a reading slump and difficulty focusing, an increase in online book shopping, a pivot to audiobooks, a pivot to physical books, an exponential increase in the number of titles on their to be read list with all of the internet scrolling and recommendations floating around online. I always love to hear what people are reading, or what is on their list. 

It can be hard to find time to read, but my favourite strategy is to hide out on the fire escape with a snack, hope the cat finds me, and hope the kids don’t. It’s always disconcerting when you’re engrossed in petting the cat and all of a sudden you hear, “What are you eating?” followed closely by, “Can I have some?” As things open up again, it will perhaps be even harder to find time, and there is always the looming possibility of the library starting up their fines, and once again I will be dodging interactions with the librarians, berating Jon into returning my overdue books into the slot late at night, getting into that age-old argument about why I’m borrowing books from the library when I have that stack of unread books on the shelf, on the floor, on the upside down crate I use for a bedside table.

But for now I have a stack of overdue books and books from my own shelf, lots to read. I can never get through it all, and sometimes the ambition can be a bit much, and sometimes it can be glorious. I suppose it doesn’t matter too much, so long as the cat is on my lap.