Well, dear reader, it’s been a miserable year in lockdown, but at least there has been time for reading. I have read 80 books — and counting — during this COVID period, so I wanted to take this holiday opportunity to share some of my reading highlights with you.
The pandemic did cause me to change some reading habits. The difficulty of getting new physical books in the earliest days of the lockdown caused me to shift at least partially to e-books. While there was some adjustment there, I also came to appreciate some of the e-book advantages, including the abilities to email quotes to oneself and to search a book for any word, not just the ones the publisher was willing to index. The scarcity also made me value print books even more, and my efforts to exchange them with friends in the early days of the pandemic reminded me of stories of Abraham Lincoln walking for miles to borrow a new book.
Looking back, it is clear I concentrated my 2020 reading efforts in three general categories: history/biography; social commentary; and entertainment, be it sports or the visual arts.
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