And with the flick of a pen, my little corner of the world suddenly changed. This week, the community of Plainview, Texas learned that Coronavirus had made its way into our midst. Local government responded and issued a stay-in-place order. Thankfully, my work at the university is considered essential, so I can still get out of the house daily and be surrounded by people…or so I thought. Friday became a bit of an emotional roller coaster ride for me as we learned that Wayland would close down all of its campuses to the public effective immediately. Employees with keys to buildings may continue to access their offices (assuming it is a closed office with a closing door) and work. That’s it — come in, work, and leave. I don’t know exactly how that is going to play out in the weeks ahead, but I’m not looking forward to it at all. Even though I consider myself an introvert, I also suffer from depression and know that isolation from friends is bad news for me. I need to hear laughter and to have some level of physical touch in my life.
But, for right now, I’m managing and maintaining as much normalcy as I can. I’m keeping a relatively stable schedule going and have regular interaction with people virtually through Zoom and lots of phone calls home to the Geriatric Ward. I’m also continuing my adventures in books. This week, I completed Chaim Potok’s wonderful novel, In the Beginning. If you missed it, you can find my review of that novel here.
I finished the Potok on Thursday, I think….all of my days are beginning to run together. I finally decided to dive into the first volume of Jeffrey Archer’s Clifton Chronicles. I encountered Only Time Will Tell several years ago as an audio book when my work required lots of commuting around Arkansas and Tennessee. The book made a tremendous impact on me and I knew that I wanted to continue the saga of the Clifton family, but I wanted to actually read the books as oppose to merely listen to them. But, I’m not a fan of reading a series while I wait for the latest volumes to appear from publishing houses. Over Christmas, I decided to take a look and found the entire series available as a single package from Amazon for a very reasonable cost. So The Clifton Chronicles have served as the base for a very large TBR stack that lives on the kitchen island in my apartment since I returned from holiday in January. This seemed like the perfect time to break the packaging and open the first book. I’m just getting started really — only about 85 pages in — but I am totally hooked on the story of young Harry Clifton and anxious to see what happens next.
This week’s update took a very different slant from my normal approach to these posts. I suppose I just needed to interact with the silent readers behind the screen. I would love to hear from you though. Don’t just be a silent reader — especially if you have made it this far! Tell me what you are reading at the moment and what is beckoning from your personal TBR stack. Above all, stay safe, care for yourself and each other, and continue to escape the insanity of the COVID-19 pandemic in the pages of a good book.
~Kennith
Reading for Me 
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