reading when the world crumbles

This was not a good year for reading for me. I read a lot, but it was almost every time hard to settle on a book to read, to find something that fit my mood even though I didn’t know what my mood was, to choose a book that wasn’t too heavy to get through but wasn’t too frivolous. What a luxury it is to be able to set aside time to read, when other people are facing the horrors of not being able to get into this country to be reunited with their families or to be safe from persecution and poverty and illness, when others are here but cannot leave and are scared to open their doors for fear of being dragged away from their homes, when others are reliving sexual assault and harassment and humiliation from yesterday or decades ago. But what a necessity it is to…