2020 reading

I read much, much less this year than I have done in recent years; only 43 books, compared to 70-odd for the last couple of years. Maybe it's the pandemic; I know lots of people have commented that they've been struggling to focus on reading, and that's definitely affected what I read (much more fluff and lots of romance). I do wonder, though, if it's at least partly due to being back on antidepressants. I went through a long period a few years ago where I hardly read at all, and rediscovered reading once I came off ADs. And it's noticeable that the real drop-off was in the latter part of the year, after I'd gone back on them in July. I read 36 books up to the end of July, and only seven after than, and have only finished two books since the middle of September. (I'm currently reading Ursula Le Guin's No Time to Spare and the Silk and Steel anthology in very small chunks, and am nowhere near finished with either.)

The ADs have done me a lot of good, but I do miss reading.

Of the 43 books I read, only 6 were by men (and one other was co-authored by a man and a woman). Only 5 were by people of colour (I meant to do better, and have been deliberately buying books by POC, but a lot of that buying happened after the slowdown in reading so I haven't got to them yet). 11 (as far as I can tell) are by LGBTQ+ authors.

( Full list )

2020 in review

At the start of 2020, I said:

My wishes for the year are for my father to regain some of his energy and be able to do more than go to Waitrose once a week (and for my mother to be able to get something of her life back, too), and to still be with us in a year's time, and for C's treatment to be successful, but I don't think that the odds are good for either of them.

Well, my dad isn't really any better, and for obvious reasons hasn't even been going to Waitrose (though my parents managed quite a few socially-distanced garden meetups over the summer), but he is still with us and no worse than he was, and C's treatment was a huge success and she's been back at work for six months. I swear there wasn't a monkey's paw in the room when I wrote that!

Twelve months ago I certainly didn't expect that I'd spend most of the year working from home, communicating with my colleagues via videoconference and not face to face. Even at the end of February, when I went to London for the last time to go to a clothes swap (I'm so glad I had that chance to see everyone before lockdown), just as the first UK cases were being diagnosed, I never expected that lockdown would go on for so long. It's been a difficult year, as I know it has for everyone; too much work and too little opportunity to do fun things in my leisure time. My mental health was rocky from the start and tanked completely in July, but citalopram really seems to have helped (I should probably have been on it for years, really). I'm very glad I did manage to get to Norfolk for a few days in September, just before case numbers started to rise again, and spent some time with my parents (safely outdoors, obviously) but I wish I could have seen them more often, and I miss all the friends I haven't been able to spend time with.

There have been positives, though. I think T and I have got much better at sharing our space, even though we've been living together for over two decades. I've been walking before work most days, which has been wonderful, and I've enjoyed sharing the photos I've taken on Instagram. I've been spending my weekends sewing and now have a whole handmade wardrobe of dungarees, trousers, and even proper button-up shirts, as well as having managed to knit three cardigans and most of a jumper. And accepting a friend's invitation to swim in the river at the start of July didn't just lead to me loving outdoor swimming so much that I'm not sure I ever want to go back to pool swimming, but also to a closer friendship with my two swimming buddies than I ever imagined having.

And actually, despite everything, 2020 hasn't been anything like as bad for me as 2019 was. (Which says more about 2019 than it does about 2020, really.)