I have always loved reading. When I was a kid I would get lost in books for hours at a time. Many of those stories still live vividly in my mind. Even as an adult, reading is something I enjoy doing for pleasure, for work, and with my children. Over the last few months – in particular, since March 2020 – my reading habits have changed.
Life is different with COVID-19 on our doorsteps. Yes, we are at home more, which is obvious, but what I find even more interesting is that my at-home activities have been impacted. For me, I can observe this in my reading habits. How about you?

Reading in General

I have both (1) clung to reading and (2) felt too tired to engage with reading during this pandemic.
This hearkens to the fact that my work life became doubly busy. I very sadly had to layoff my assistant, making me a true solo-entrepreneur doing literally every job in my business. Even my actual jobs, such as art curating, became more, not less, busy. Virtual art shows have become a big thing, but the hours it takes to curate, organize, video edit, and promote multiply the actual job. And that is just one example of how my work has blossomed in hours over the last four months. I love what I do, so I’ve enjoyed the virtual work and online connections, but it simply means more work hours clocked.
Then there is school-at-home, which started out with me 100% engaged and supporting my kids side-by-side. I loved that, but it was not sustainable while I also juggle multiple jobs (author, artist, art curator, etc…). I do want to say that I ***LOVED*** the extra time with my children. I have many special memories from that time.
Plus, there’s the fact that it’s hard to shut off work when there is literally zero divide between work and home life. For March, April, and May, I did my work outside of my home office, beside my kiddos, to not only supervise their schoolwork, but to generally be with them. One of my kids drastically craved mommy-time. Perhaps he was feeling uncomfortable with the changes in the world, or maybe he was simply loving the additional quality time we had together. Whatever it was, it made my professional life more complicated than simply sitting down and getting work done.
I feel tired even hashing this all out. I have very much coped by reading, though my reading habits have very obviously changed.

• Being home more means that I have read far more books by this time of year than I ever have. I get a kick out of tracking my books finished on Goodreads. This year I have been constantly 6-9 books ahead of where I should be with my yearly goal. At the time of writing this, I’ve read 33 out of my 50 book goal for 2020. That’s 9 books ahead.
• I also feel I have more books on the go that ever before. Always one to read more than one book at a time, this is not unusual for me, though not to the same extent.
• While I am reading a lot and widely, I also have days where I am literally too exhausted to read at night. I am a *little* burnt out from the last four months. COVID-19 has been emotionally stressful and while I have not been sick, I have let my exercise routine slack in the mundane trudge of countless identical days. COVID has truly affected my life in many ways beyond physical illness. It has translated into fatigue I sincerely hope to remedy over the summer.

Genre of Books

Fantasy has been my favorite genre all my life, however I have found that COVID life has drastically affected my reading preferences. Yes, I am still reading fantasy, my primary genre, which is a great escape, but other genres have risen and fallen by the wayside. I have had virtually zero desire to read business books, which I loved pre-COVID. Instead, I have had a huge appetite for poetry collections. Poetry evokes emotion and causes us to read slowly and thoughtfully. Especially in the early days of lock down, I poured through poetry books I’ve had on my to-read-pile for more than a year. Some of it really spoke to me – poetry books about grief and healing, about personal empowerment – while others felt flat (like a book of tedious girl-power disguised as adapted fairy tales… I’m all for girl-power, but it needs depth minus cliche).

Audio Books

Once a huge part of my life, audio books have declined for me. As I mentioned, I am not exercising as much as I used to, nor am I commuting regularly. Those are two of the major circumstances where I would plug into my local library’s audio book selection. As stated above, exercise is a priority to me and I need to get my rear in gear, so perhaps the audio consumption of books will increase in the coming months.

E-Books

I have never been an e-book reader. About a month ago I tried reading a poetry e-book and it felt all wrong. Especially for poetry, the physical object of paper and printed words feels necessary. Maybe this is just me… HOWEVER, my husband gifted our two oldest children with e-readers and now they are hooked on e-books. They read constantly and stay up far too late for their ages reading books. I’m a proud mama!

Further Reading (About Changing Reading Habits)

If this topic interests you, here’s an article about reading habits in Canada published in April 2020 with lots of stats: “The Impact of COVID-19 on Reading” on Book Net Canada 
BookBub’s article called “How Reader Behavior Is Changing During the COVID-19 Crisis” by Carlyn Robertson concludes, “One thing that seems clear is that people are still seeking out your books to help them learn, escape, find solace, and cope at this time.”

Here’s an article by Nancy R. Gough, PhD called “Coronavirus Completely Changed my Reading Habits” (Aka she no longer read for pleasure; it’s all

coronavirus, all the time.)