By Cat Barbour ’24
Staff Writer
After Mount Holyoke closed in mid-March because of the COVID-19 pandemic, many students found themselves with more free time, uncertainty about the future and a new normal to adapt to. Even their reading habits had to adapt for the times. Gone were the days of strolling carefree through library stacks. While some bookstores offered shipping, most were closed in the spring. Readers had to get creative. Some finally had the time to turn to their ever-growing “to-be-read” piles at home. These are a few of their stories.
Adelia Brown ’22 spoke to the Mount Holyoke News over Zoom. She’s currently reading “The Most Fun We Ever Had” by Claire Lombardo, the story of four daughters searching for their own love stories just as epic as their parents’. Due to the pandemic, Brown is finding an issue with the books she usually likes. “I used to read a lot of post-apocalyptic and horror novels about society being decimated by plagues, and that’s just less fun now,” she said. Instead, Brown has turned to childhood favorites like “The Baby-Sitters Club” and other books that calm her.
With brick-and-mortar libraries closed, Brown began using OverDrive, a platform for accessing e-books used by 90 percent of North American libraries. Leisure reading was a habit she lost after high school due to the amount of reading required for college classes. In the past, Brown only had time to read on flights back home. Now, she can be seen pacing around her living room in Iowa, book in hand.
Throughout the past few months, Lynn Moynahan FP ’22 has also invigorated her reading habits. She is currently reading “Americanah” by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, which tells the story of two people who leave Nigeria for a better life in the West. Partly because of a reading-intensive class in the spring semester and partly due to her sudden increase in free time, Moynahan, too, has started reading more during the pandemic. Since quarantine shut down in-person book clubs, many turned to Facebook to connect with fellow readers, and Moynahan was no different. She was introduced to new books and perspectives through engagement with social media.
“It mostly started once there was a big revival in Black voices that need to be heard, that need to be read,” Moyanhan said. “I’ve made it a point to read more Black authors and Black stories. That’s one reason why I wanted to read Adichie’s book. I’ve been really enjoying it and it’s one of those things that I never thought about, how … not reading … is affecting how I’m seeing things.”
Aleah Larson ’24 was busy during quarantine — she finished 50 books. She is currently reading “Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban” by J.K. Rowling, the third book in the series. Like many readers, she was worried that she had not read enough of the classics, so she used quarantine to remedy that.
Larson also made time to widen her reading horizons. “I think for people like me who are into classics, we’re used to books, like, by Jane Austen and stuff, and then you realize that there are other classics by other people about different things than just English society,” Larson said. “I think it's opened my eyes to a lot of older books that are written by people who aren’t white.”
Larson and Moynahan are not the only ones seeking out new perspectives. According to The Washington Post, the five most-read authors this August were Brit Bennett, author of “The Vanishing Half,” Ibram X. Kendi, author of “How to Be an Antiracist,” Hilary Mantel, author of the Wolf Hall trilogy, Isabel Wilkerson, author of “Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents” and Jeanine Cummins, author of “American Dirt.”
Increased reading is also a trend throughout the nation. According to Fortune magazine, OverDrive has seen a 53 percent increase in e-book loans since mid-March, and 343,000 people have created digital library cards. While this pandemic has changed many things, a love of reading is not one of them.