Several weeks ago, I read The Magician by Colm Tóbín because he was coming to a local museum to give a talk (which of course ended up being virtual but at this point I’ll take a virtual talk over a cancelled one!) The book itself was a wonderful, thoughtful piece but something Tóbín said at the event stayed with me. He was discussing the influence of the books you read when you are young and how you never really shake them. Of course, I immediately understood what he meant. Reading as a teenager is such a specific experience (I think any person who still loves Harry Potter can tell you that). For me, it was because I could fully lose myself for periods of time – like during summer break or on a snow day. Once I got older and had more responsibilities it became harder to disappear into a book. The random thoughts about the groceries, or the tax returns, or if I remembered to put my metro card back into my wallet from the back pocket of my jeans sitting on the bedroom floor…

When you are young books also offer you freedom and independence that you haven’t achieved in real life yet. You can travel the world via paperback before you even have your driver’s license. The Hunger Games, Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter… the world of a young reader is almost unlimited.

But as much as I agreed with Tóbín about adolescent reading I also disagreed that it can never happen again… because a pandemic taught me otherwise. Within a week of lockdown, it became clear I was going to have free time and a small world just like when I was young. The difference of course was that I was also afraid. Sometimes my historical knowledge is a burden. Being aware of the death toll of other pandemics (or even epidemics) left me paralyzed and knowing how long they can rampage through a society just meant all of the talk about the three-month lockdown meant nothing to me – I knew it would stretch on much longer. So, I turned to my bookshelves.

At first it kept me sane and distracted, but within a few weeks reading had settled back into my bones. I wasn’t just reading to escape, I was reading to think, to feel, to share (thankfully so many of my friends also turned to their bookshelves).

My first choice was Wolf Hall because when it came out, I was at the busiest point in my high school career and although I was still a reader, once I had finished with my assignments I tended to turn towards lighter novels in my free time. (Obama famously read Wolf Hall his first year out of office because, of course, he was pretty busy when it was first released too). I bought my copy of Wolf Hall and Bring Up The Bodies for a few dollars on a trip to the Chicago library book sale and they sat on my shelf for two years until a pandemic lockdown gave me the time and attention to devour them. I will forever be grateful to Hilary Mantel for transporting me back in time and away from the uncertainty and isolation of those weeks in March of 2020.  It was a feeling of escape I hadn’t felt in years and as soon as I finished The Mirror and the Light, I realized reading would save me from the mental health crush of the pandemic. So, I tackled other books that have been on my shelves for years, I devoured books just being released, books I’d never heard of, and books I’ve had in the back of my head for ages. I went back to old favorites on nights when I couldn’t sleep. I got lost in narratives while going for walks (desperate to be free of the same four walls) thanks to audiobooks. I even kept my tastebuds occupied with cookbooks focusing on the place so I couldn’t possibly visit but wanted to feel closer to.

More than that, books also kept me from feeling alone. The characters reminded me of people I haven’t met yet, people I couldn’t see, people I might never see again. Reading became my lifeline.

Of course, there were texts I read at university or in the years since graduation that pulled me in, made an impression. But being this emotionally tied to my reading was a feeling I hadn’t experienced since I was young, and it made me feel alive again when so many other pieces of my life were gone. Now that things are starting to move to a new phase of the pandemic – one where illness and quarantine will still be around, but lockdowns seem to be a thing of the past – I know my emotional connection to reading will also shift. Now that I can see people again, have other experiences, go back to the theatre, even start to travel again, reading won’t be my only lifeline to the world. But I also refuse to forget what reading did for me over these past two years. How I slowed down, got lost in another world, another perspective, how I escaped from a bad day and ended it on a better note. I am grateful to have had such a wonderful experience during this truly difficult time and I don’t plan to take this second adolescence for granted.