Monthly Book Review: April 2020 + Quarantine Life

I had a separate deep thoughts post all ready to go but it's lost. I blame my husband's touchscreen laptop that defies me at every turn. I hit 'save' like a hundred times and it still popped up with the first two sentences from first draft a week old when I went to do final edits. Blurg!!!

I'm in my seventh week of working from home and the days ebb and flow - sometimes there are huge holes in the day and then I'm working into the evening hours to catch up on the flurry of emails and decisions for action the next day. Other days my butt is parked in a chair in the same position for hours while on conference calls or prepping documentation. Working in the health insurance industry provides a unique vantage point. I see daily care delivery emails that balance grim reality with positive we're-all-in-this-together messaging. I chair meetings where we discuss experience - employees who fear losing coverage and patients who fear whatever ills they feel could be the dreaded virus. It's very sobering. I am very grateful to have the love of family and friends, a home where I feel safe, and a job where I can work from home.

Without a commute, I find myself lacking as much opportunity to "read". With terms such as unprecedented, pandemic, social distancing, furlough and lockdown part of our everyday vernacular I found it hard to find something to get into. So I chose the shortest of all the books in my queue, The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides. #lazy

The Silent Patient is a psychological thriller, a good whodunnit with a rich plot. It reminds me of a certain Shyamalan movie. Alicia is an artist in an asylum for the criminally insane following the murder of her husband. Theo is a psychotherapist intent on “helping“ her. Why? What’s in it for Theo? Why won’t Alicia speak? 

Queued up next:

• Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng 
• The Gown by Jennifer Robson
• The Kept Woman by Karin Slaughter
• Winter Solstice by Rosamunde Pilcher
• The Forgotten Garden by Kate Morton

Monthly Book Review: March 2020

March started so full of hope … for Spring, for a European family vacation, for all the simple things of life. COVID-19 has robbed of us any security and certainty we might have felt a month ago. I only read one book for the month as my work from home life was consumed by all COVID-19 all the time on conference calls and video meetings, so the last thing I wanted to do was listen to anyone squawk at me. The Year of Living Danishly by Helen Russell is full of hilarious cultural bumbles resulting from a couple's move from London to Denmark. The move is a result of the author's husband taking a job at the headquarters for Lego (he is referred to as "Legoman" throughout). They decide to give it a go for at least a year. As a freelance writer, the author gives herself the assignment of uncovering why Danes rank so high on the world happiness scale. In addition to entertaining personal experience, she collects data and interviews subject matter experts regarding every aspect of "living Danishly" so there's a fair amount of statistics. She adds her own research by asking every Dane she encounters how happy they are on a scale of 1-10. Each month has it's own chapter which ends with "things I learned this month". My favorite anecdote was learning that her washing machine flashing "slut" was not personal shaming, but rather letting her know that the wash had finished.

Queued up next:

• The Gown by Jennifer Robson
• The Forgotten Garden by Kate Morton
• The Kept Woman by Karin Slaughter
• The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern
• Winter Solstice by Rosamunde Pilcher
• The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides
• Dark Places by Gillian Flynn
• Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng