Coronavirus reading

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So, here's what I'm reading right now.  I'm finding it hard to really settle on something, for reasons I will detail below.

  • The Mirror and the Light, by Hilary Mantel
    • Well, obviously.  It just came out, and I have been eagerly waiting on this book since Bring Up the Bodies was published.  In fact, there were three books I was eagerly awaiting: The City of Mirrors (final book in The Passage trilogy); The Mirror and the Light, and Winds of Winter.  So now we're just down to Winds of Winter, which I think we can all admit will NEVER BE PUBLISHED.  Anyway, this is taking longer than I had expected, which was naïve on my part as Hilary Mantel is a bit wordy and that's part of the pleasure of reading her work.
  • A Perfect Spy, by John le Carré
    • I'm working to read my way through all his books.  I'm thinking I'll do the George Smiley books in order.  I cannot overstate my deep love for John le Carré, though this one is a little hard to follow, and I think was just printed poorly because the text is really small and unclear.
  • How to Weep in Public: Feeble Offerings on Depression from One Who Knows, by Jacqueline Novak
    • This.... might not have been the best choice for me right now.  I am, owing to a combination of factors, including a longstanding personal and family history of depression (and a brand new history of crippling anxiety!), and a really rough past year culminating in a miscarriage in January and now, of course The End of the World as We Know It, I am decidedly not feeling fine, and this book isn't actually helping the way I thought it would.  Not that I thought it would help, per se, more that I thought it would ring true or something.  This is maybe, like Facebook, which I gave up for what I am calling Lent but is really my sanity, something I should shelve for the time being. Shelved in the past is The Handmaid's Tale, which is supposed to be about women's rights but for me is just about women who, like me, don't appear to be able to get pregnant, and an entire book that deals with infertility isn't very helpful.  Though I have to say, the trials of Henry VIII's wives with regards to fertility (see The Mirror and the Light) are a little rough as well.  Honest to God, once you start trying to get pregnant, EVERYTHING in popular culture seems to be childbearing related and it is NOT HELPFUL.
  • The Count of Monte Cristo, by Alexandre Dumas
    • This is one of my favorite books of all time.  It's proceeding slowly because I am reading it on my Kindle as my I-can't-sleep book.  By the time I'm reading it I am usually dosed up on 20 mg of melatonin so I only make it a few paragraphs in before I pass out.  
  • Gods of Jade and Shadow, by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
    • My treadmill book.  If I'm running or walking on the treadmill I need something distracting so I tend to go for engaging stuff, like My Sister, The Serial Killer or Children of Blood and Bone.
  • The Empty Throne, by Bernard Cornwell
    • Season 4 of The Last Kingdom comes out on Netflix in April, so I need to get through book 8 of the series.  I only just started it.
  • Personal Finance for Dummies by Eric Tyson
    • I don't think I need to explain why this is taking a long time to read.  It is what it is.

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