Ruined by Reading

 

My husband looks in the window of a book shop on South Congress. It was Christmas Day so the shop wasn't open, but we wouldn't have gone in anyway. In fact, we were only on the street there because we figured we could avoid people pretty well on Christmas Day. We've bought many a book in that shop plus some artwork and posters. 

During the pandemic, we've continued to receive three newspapers, four of five magazines (including the almost weekly The New Yorker) and have ordered books a couple of times from Powell's City of Books, our favorite bookstore of all time in Portland, OR. Never mind that we have hundreds (more than a thousand?) books in our apartment. We do spend a lot of time reading, but we never catch up! Oh, and we received this lovely coffee table book as a present:

These were Christmas presents to ourselves (ordered from Powell's):

The newspapers pile up. The 'to be read book pile' grows. The magazine piles teeter. We do spend a few hours a day reading. I could get through the newspapers faster if every puzzle grid I came across didn't sorely tempt me. Sometimes I cut them out for later. Have piles of them now. I guess if the apocalypse comes and newspapers cease publication I'll be ready.

We never like to be without words. Inside this apartment, we ought never to be. We were leaving to take the husband's car to get a tire repaired yesterday and he went back in to get a book...just in case he had to wait! (I laughed, but tucked inside my backpack were some newspaper sections.)

There is solace in reading. (Or working the puzzles.) You forget just where you are in this pandemic.