Books: Notes on Pandemic Reading and Writing
The winter weather gives devoted readers and writers a good reason for staying indoors. But during the pandemic, which upended life as we knew it, everybody’s routine changed, allowing us to pursue our passions or discover new ones. What was it like for bibliophiles? BHARTI KIRCHNER spoke to other notable authors for insights on reading and writing.
During the early lockdown days, even an avid reader like me found it difficult to pick up a book. The library doors were shut, bookstores only partially open, literary events non-existent, and gloomy news saturated the media. Before long, however, I turned off the screen, put my feet up and got lost in reading, doing so for escape, connection or enlightenment, whatever you might call it. I’m glad to have done so. In fact, like other daily activities of mine—writing the next novel, cooking, taking walks and cleaning out the closet— reading reclaimed its place as an integral part of my day. And it has been that way ever since. Recently, when I asked several bibliophiles what sustained them during this still-unfolding period of crisis, I received a wealth of enthusiastic answers.
[Right] Author Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni teaches creative writing at the University of Houston.
“Reading became a joyful way to enjoy other worlds and times and be with many kinds of people,” says Chitra Divakaruni. An award-winning and bestselling author of 19 books, she teaches creative writing at the University of Houston. “It helped me to forget, temporarily, some of the harsh realities we were facing. With family in India we could not be with or help in any way, this was very needed. I surprised myself by going through all my sons’ books from when they were teenagers. I read the entire Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling, and The Lord of the Rings trilogy by J.R.R. Tolkien. I also re-read Tagore’s The Home and the World and Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale. For chill-thrills, I re-read Stephen King’s The Shining.”
What alternatives are there if you can’t concentrate? “For several months, early in the pandemic, I had a very difficult time reading,” says Nancy Pearl, author of the Book Lust series and the novel George & Lizzie. “I just couldn’t concentrate or force myself to sit still long enough to turn pages, which is why I turned to audio books. What got me through were my daily long walks of six or seven miles and doing 1000-piece jigsaw puzzles, because I could combine doing both those activities with listening to the audio books.”
[Left] Nalini Iyer, professor of English at Seattle University, is chief editor of South Asian Review.
“I found that it was a bit harder to focus on intricate and deep books during certain phases of the pandemic when I was really stressed and was mostly doom scrolling on social media,” says Nalini Iyer, professor of English at Seattle University, co-author/co-editor of three academic books, and chief editor of the journal South Asian Review. “Overall, though, books were my escape and my solace.”
[Right] Amitava Kumar is an author and professor of English at Vassar College.
“One of the main routines that I got into was the practice of reading with others,” says author Amitava Kumar, a writer and journalist who was born in India and who now teaches English at Vassar College. “Author Yiyun Li had this great idea that we should all read Tolstoy’s War and Peace. A long immersion in a book could provide an anchor in our chaotic times. The reading was organized by the literary organization A Public Space. People in different cities, and even different countries, read the same pages each day and posted some responses online. I wouldn’t have read such a long book by myself.”
Old and new favorites
Might you end up discovering a new genre or appreciating one further? The answer is yes, and the mystery/suspense/thriller genre is most often cited in this regard. According to an article published in conversation.com (“How reading habits have changed during the Covid-19 lockdown”), “People tend to find comfort in certain books and genre preferences can change during periods of stress. This helps to explain why much genre fiction has roots in times of significant social, political, or economic upheaval. Gothic literature is, in part, a British Protestant response to the French Revolution (1789-99).”
Iyer concurs. “Reading mystery/ suspense/ thriller books has been a pleasure. Bharti Kirchner’s Murder at Andaman: A Maya Mallick Mystery (Book 2) was one such and I’ve also been reading John Banville/ Benjamin Black, Kathy Reichs, Vivienne Chien among others.”
[Left] Nancy Pearl is a librarian, an author and a literary critic in Seattle.
“My book club went virtual during the pandemic,” says Divakaruni. “But with my book club friends I read the fun suspenseful murder mystery The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides. After that, I got hold of Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express, which I had somehow missed in my growing-up years, and enjoyed that, too.”
“I discovered the books published by Dean Street Press, a British company that reprints novels from the Golden Age of Mysteries and women writers from the mid-20th century,” says Pearl, “and golly, I’ve enjoyed so many of these books.” Pearl also recommends Shadow Intelligence by Oliver Harris. “This is one of the best spy novels I’ve read in a long time—like John le Carré’s best, but definitely 21st century spycraft,” she adds.
Call of the homeland?
Do we crave writings by authors from our country of origin or books populated by characters we identify with? I’d give an affirmative reply. I particularly enjoyed The Reading List, a novel by Sara Nisha Adams. Set in London, it features a cast of British and South Asian characters (the novel was reviewed in the August 2021 issue of Khabar).
An affirmative answer also comes from Iyer, who says, “I’ve read a lot of new works by writers of color, including Kristen Millares Young, Sonora Jha, Rajiv Mohabir, Viet Thanh Nguyen, Zakiya Dalila Harris. I’ve also re-read other books by such writers as Chinua Achebe, Salman Rushdie, Mohja Kahf, Laila Lalami among others.”
“A book that I think all desis should read came out during the pandemic, Ayad Akhtar’s Homeland Elegies,” says Kumar. “Akhtar is the winner of the Pulitzer Prize for his play, Disgraced. But Homeland Elegies is fiction in the guise of a memoir. In it, a Muslim writer called Ayad Akhtar grapples with the questions of longing and belonging in post-Trump America. We recently observed the twentieth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks; Akhtar’s novel is a brilliant dissection of the new global order that followed 9/11.”
Authors find new focus
How did the pademic affect writing? Says Kumar: “I was writing a novel about the news when the pandemic arrived. And very soon it became clear that what we were faced with, even in the middle of the coronavirus crisis, was what the World Health Organization called ‘an infodemic.’ This was something that interested me because I had been writing so far about fake news. So, my writing didn’t suffer during the pandemic; in fact, it found a new focus.”
“The enforced solitude helped my writing practice, as writing—like reading—allowed me to enter a very different world,” insists Divakaruni. “Often when I felt frustrated and stressed by the news of my world, I immersed myself in the life and times of my heroine, Maharani Jindan Kaur, who was Maharajah Ranjit Singh’s youngest queen and, after his passing, the Queen Regent who fought the British valiantly. It actually took me a little less time to write this upcoming novel, The Last Queen, than it usually does because there were less distractions.”
As for my own writing: During the initial lockdown, busy with various volunteer activities, I didn’t work much on my next novel, titled Murder at Jaipur: A Maya Mallick Mystery (Book 3). Recently, however, I’ve returned to writing and find it pleasurable. I am beginning to wonder if this might not be a sneaky gift of the pandemic: Giving us space and hunger for creativity and allowing for gratitude to blossom, notwithstanding the difficulties.
What other outlets and strengths did the writers discover? “I attended a lot of book talks and conferences and connected virtually to people across the globe and got book recommendations that I might not have pursued on my own,” says Iyer. She discovered Tana French and Liane Moriarty from her group of South Asian women academics.
[Right] Bharti Kirchner, who wrote this article, is an author in Seattle.
Bharti Kirchner, who wrote this article,
is an author in Seattle.Bharti Kirchner, who wrote this article,
is an author in Seattle.
“Reading is a workout for the brain,” says Dr Shyam Bhat in a Scroll.in interview. A pioneer of integrative medicine and holistic psychiatry in India, Bhatt adds: “And just as physical exercise decreases the risk of diabetes and heart disease, regular reading decreases the risk of conditions such as dementia, and improves memory, concentration, and mood. This is especially relevant in these times of Covid.”
“Comfort reading—that is, re-reading books that I know I’ve loved in the past—is the best form of selfcare that I’m aware of,” says Pearl. “I read a number of spiritual books,” says Divakaruni. “The Art of Happiness by the Dalai Lama gave me a great deal of solace. I also read and loved The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle.”
Reading for the holiday season
Which books would they consider buying as gifts? “I’d consider giving Zakiya Dalila Harris’s The Other Black Girl, which is a satirical look at the publishing industry from a Black woman’s perspective and is entertaining and thought provoking,” says Iyer. “I’d also consider Kamila Shamsie’s Home Fire, which is a brilliant novel that I’m teaching this term and because it really brings home the impact of the global war on terror—a necessary understanding for all of us at this time.”
Pearl recommends The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas by Gertrude Stein/Maira Kalman.
“Even if I knew that someone had already read this, I’d gift them this edition because of Maira Kalman’s absolutely perfect illustrations, which make me smile just thinking about how much I love them. It is such a delight to read, so meta in that it’s Stein writing in Toklas’s voice mostly about Stein.”
Although intended for churchgoers, the subject matter of an 85-page book titled Serving with Grace: Lay Leadership as a Spiritual Practice, by Erik Walker Wikstrom, draws my attention. During these tough times, whenever I can, I apply the concept of grace or goodwill to my daily interactions with others. In addition to giving and receiving books, being generous with love, kindness and other gifts—besides giving grace to ourselves, our loved ones and even strangers— could make a difference.
Bharti Kirchner is the award-winning author of twelve books, eight novels and four nonfiction works. A book critic for The Seattle Times, she also contributes to Khabar. She can be reached at bhartik@aol.com.
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