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John Jackson's avatar

I think I finished Justin Cronin’s “The Passage” trilogy during those first few months. We started a book club in the family so at least one night per week we could have something to talk about at dinner that wasn’t related to the pandemic. We kept it going for almost a year and read “Little Women,” “The House in the Cerulean Sea,” “And Then There Were None,” “Murder on the Orient Express,” and one or two books in the “Keeper of the Lost Cities” series.

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Gina G.'s avatar

A friend started a Facebook Group called "The Readers Grim" and we read and discussed pandemic-themed books: Severance by Ming La, The Doomsday Book by Connie Willis, Fever, 1793 by Laurie Halse Anderson, The Year of Wonders by Geraldine Brooks, The Dreamers by Karen Thompson Walker, The Andromeda Strain by Michael Crichton, The Last Town on Earth by Thomas Mullen, Wanderers by Chuck Wendig, and The Stand by Stephen King

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Laura Y's avatar

I started the Inspector Gamache series.

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Jam Canezal's avatar

I read Little Women and The Color Purple during that first two weeks. I wasn’t reading/buying books in the years before lockdown and those two were the only ones I had which I hadn’t read yet.

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Mr. Troy Ford's avatar

Didn't read a book, I wrote a book during COVID - my first, broke through a 34-year writer's block... :) (Oh, I'm sure I read Lord of the Rings, again.)

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De Antoni's avatar

Covid shut down was for me like cool holidays not at all disorienting!!!

I discovered neuroscience free courses of Robert sapolsky 's Behave ,Paaskeep 's Archéologie of mind " and Ekman s "Lie to me "fantastic read!!

Life was more close to our primitive habitats during shut down covid than it is now !! We were closer to our families ,we have lot of time to sit down and do nothing or just talk ,walk,sleep,like a wonderful stop in time dans la frénésie absurde de la vie avant et après covid..

The shut down make me remember that slowing down your life is a real lifestyle..a must

Good read !!

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Grant Fitzgerald's avatar

My wife read this one last year as her theatre company announced they would be performing Natasha Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812. She loved it for the most part. I filmed the opening prologue for their cast announcement video. https://youtu.be/ERtzRoVCYdU?si=g_6uc2nkryWqsJTG

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Irene's avatar

I stopped watching TV and never went back and I read about 50 books fiction and non fiction

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Ethan Patton's avatar

I jumped straight into Fantasy and Sci-Fi worlds to escape. I read all of Harry Potter and the Eragon series, both for the first time, as a way of filling in "gaps" from my childhood that I missed out on. I also read multiple Andy Weir books and Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson. Basically, I spent no time on the actual normal Earth we know.

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Jason Codner's avatar

Nothing during March, but then an eclectic mix of work related Taking charge of ADHD, some science non fiction from the fantastic Richard Wiseman and his book 59 seconds. Old school classics from Dale Carneige, with his well know How to win friends and influence people as well as his lesser known outwitting the devil. Fiction wise the first in Cassandra Clare Mortal Instruments series, City of bones.

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Carol Grayson's avatar

The first thing I did was reread Middlemarch.

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Corrie's avatar

I had newborn twins and read the Harry Potter series for the first time, exclusively on the kindle app on my phone. It was obviously very easy reading, but it was perfect for the level of sleep-deprivation I was experiencing. A bit further into the pandemic, I got into the octogenarian worlds of Olive Kitteridge and Gilead so that was another mood altogether!

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Frantic Pedantic's avatar

Early on, I decided to give the Game of Thrones/ASOIAF series a go and rather enjoyed having the time to read a bunch of very long fantasy books at leisure, especially since the genre is not a go-to for me. Also re-read Dietrich Bonhoeffer's Letters and Papers from Prison (apt) and James Holt's Why Does the World Exist? in those early months.

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Jennifer Silva Redmond's avatar

Yes, I went back to my fave classics too. Like A Tale of Two Cities. It was, after all the worst of times and for some the best of times (some writer friends of mine liked staying home from work and writing!). And I loved The Last Blue by Isla Morely, which came out in May of 2020 but was set in the south in the in contemporary times and the 1930s.

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Stephanie's avatar

One of my book club friends recommended a reread of Harry Potter and that was exactly what I needed - the ultimate comfort at that time!

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Benjamin Spall's avatar

Can't believe you picked A Gentleman in Moscow in advance of the shut down! That's wild. I struggled to read at all for the first few months of COVID. When I did get back to it a couple months in, I read Leadership: In Turbulent Times by Doris Kearns Goodwin which is a gem of a book. I imagine you've read it, but I highly recommend it if not!

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