It is a strange thing to rediscover reading in the midst of tragedy. There are too many impossible stories from every direction: friends, friends-of-friends, loved ones of all ages. And reading seems a bourgeois luxury in such a time, one afforded only to those with space and health and paychecks still arriving today.

But, truthfully, I’ve rediscovered a love of fiction. In quarantine, reading is a backdoor escape into other worlds I can touch with my eyes. Reading is the only thing that can both suspend the weirdness of the moment but also completely contextualize it. Through fiction, I can live in other places, both much like this world and also entirely apart from it. It is a therapy, it is a meditation, it is a social world not at at a distance but just a thin space away from the tip of my nose.