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Illustration by Rachel Wada
“What’s new?”
“Nothing.”
“How are the kids?”
“Fine.”
If you’re anything like me this is what many of your conversations were like over the last two years, as the pandemic dragged on and lockdowns and winter storms gave us less and less to talk about.
For months on end, we didn’t do anything. We didn’t go anywhere except the grocery store. We were tired of talking about COVID, or politics or what we watched on Netflix. When I talked to my adult sons on the phone or Zoom, we were running out of things to say.
We are, however, a family of voracious readers and we often talk about what we are reading.
Years ago when, as music lovers, my sons and I read Daniel Levitin’s This is Your Brain on Music and discussed each chapter as we went along. Sometimes we talked about having a family book club, but never did anything about it.
Then, as the months dragged on, one day dribbling into another, the idea took on a whole new dimension.
My elder son, Jonathan, prefers non-fiction. As soon as the reviews of Margaret MacMillan’s new book, War, came out, I sent a copy to him and we decided to read the book together, setting up a time for a phone discussion to encourage both of us to keep to the schedule. I found that I was paying careful attention to my reading; making notes, thinking of questions we might have and what points would lead us to a spirited discussion.
Reading together this way was so enjoyable that we continued with The Ministry of Truth: the Biography of George Orwell’s 1984, by Dorian Lynskey. At one point I remember Jonathan enthusiastically saying, “I’m so happy for you that you are going to read chapter two. I love his writing style, the words he uses - it’s rare to see a non-fiction writer using language like this.”
We also read the sobering Twilight of Democracy by Anne Applebaum.
The surprise highlight of our year of reading was a book that Jonathan discovered, a long and carefully researched biography of Mark Twain by Ron Powers. We loved learning about the complicated life of Samuel Clemens and a great deal about the history of 19th-century America.
When for a brief time last summer, the pandemic seemed to be lessening, I was able to visit Jonathan in Connecticut and we went to see the famous home that Twain built in New Haven. It was as if we already knew every inch of that unusual house right down to the strange bed that Sam and his wife bought in Italy.
Together, we watched each episode of The Crown, again setting a time for discussion. As with our unofficial book club, we brought our different perspectives to the discussion; I remembered much of this story from reading and watching TV as it originally took place; Jonathan was learning about it for the first time.
My younger son, Isaac, his wife, Emma, and I share many interests such as opera, jazz and travel and we love many of the same books. During the first pandemic winter we decided to read George Eliot’s Middlemarch together,
It was the perfect time to read this book, to hunker down with a steaming cup of tea on a bleak winter afternoon and retreat into another world. Eliot’s style forces you to slow down as you read, and we took our time over that winter, reading one book at a time, taking notes and FaceTiming every few weeks for an animated discussion of what we had read. We all loved the book, and our different perspectives enriched our discussions. Middlemarch was published in 1871, and is set partly in 1832. So it was quite a shock to read about little town’s council meeting where they discussed how they would deal with the cholera epidemic that had come to London and would eventually reach them as well. Some things never change.
The three of us enjoyed reading together so much that we next decided to tackle James Joyce’s Ulysses. It was almost like being in university again. We underlined and made notes as we read, studied our notes and dug up internet articles to help us along. In our discussions, we wrestled with the challenges of the famous novel. We were about halfway through the book, when their baby, Sebastian, arrived and we took a break from our reading.
In the fall, we decided that we would give up on Joyce for now, and started Thomas Mann’s Buddenbrooks instead, and this famous novel has kept us going all winter.
In addition, we watched Iain Scott’s opera lectures together and enjoyed a series of gourmet cooking classes online.
The idea of a book club took another spin when my sons, daughter-in law and a friend of theirs who is a professor at a midwest university hired a tutor and studied The Iliad, together, book by book.
Now life is getting close to normal. We are going out again to theatres and movies and dinners with friends. We are starting to travel again. Those dark days of being stuck at home, facing the grim news every day and worrying about our own health and that of those around us are becoming to seem like a distant memory.
But when I think back to that strange half-life we lived for the last two years, what stands out for me is how reading together helped so much to get us through that time.
We would read with a goal, a certain section or a number of pages that we had to get through for the next meeting. Knowing this gave a certain urgency to my readings. Reading was more than just an escape; it was a challenge.
I found that I read more thoughtfully, asking myself what I would want to talk about. What ideas would I like to share? Sometimes, when I read something that really impressed me, I could hardly wait to hear what the others would have to say about it.
But it is more than that, more than just sharing of excitement about a book that makes being part of a book club so rewarding.
When we read together, we developed a new relationship. Something quite different from being members of a family. A mother and her children. The age gap disappeared. When we talked about our books, we were peers; bringing our different experiences, perspectives and opinions to those exuberant conversations.
Reading through the pandemic changed who we are.
Maxanne Ezer lives in Toronto.
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