If you were a furloughed federal worker, you’d have loads of time right now.
According to an essay by Sarah Wendell in The Washington Post, many of the 800,000 furloughed federal employees are spending it reading.
Wendell writes,
I started noticing the trend in my own home, where my husband, furloughed federal employee Adam Wendell, has been burning through books at a startling pace. It’s a good alternative to checking Twitter every 10 minutes to see if the shutdown has ended, he explains.
Wendell says her husband Adam is powering though Jim Butcher’s Dresden Files books, a fantasy/mystery series. She also interviewed a furloughed meteorologist in Oklahoma, Barb Mayes Boustead, who recently finished Tara Westover’s Educated, Sam Anderson’s Boom Town, and Elin Hilderbrand’s Winter in Paradise.
Wendell says library use is up in the D.C. area. “Arlington County has noticed a pronounced increase in its e-book and e-audio circulation from January 2018 to January 2019. While there’s typically a jump of between 1,000 and 3,000 titles, this year it’s closer to 12,000. ”
A furlough might send me into the arms of Commissario Guido Brunett, the hero of Donna Leon’s mysteries. A few years ago on PBS, Louise Erdrich, the novelist and owner of Birchbark Books in Minneapolis, recommended Leon’s series as unputdownable.
What would you read if you were on furlough? Or what are you reading on furlough? I’m turning on the comments just for today so you can recommend books to read during the shutdown!
By the way, I’m 100% with Nancy Pelosi.
My husband is on furlough and he’s reading Barnaby Rudge and the new Frederick Douglass bio. She better not give in!
Cynthia, I hope your husband is doing OK on the furlough! And thank God he’s reading such good books!
I don’t wish the being furloughed on anyone, although the thought of not having anything to do in the winter months but curl up with a book sounds luxurious. I would love the time to tackle several novels that have been on my to-read list forever, which always take a backseat to the new releases that grab me. My first choices would be Our Mutual Friend by Dickens, Clayhanger by Arnold Bennett, and The Freelands by John Galsworthy. I want to try something by Galsworthy that isn’t The Forsyte Saga, which I love and reread regularly.
I’m a great fan of all these authors. Excellent furlough reading! It IS odd that no one talks about Galsworthy except in terms of The Forsyte Saga.
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Some of Galsworthy’s plays are put on now-and-then by London theatres.
All, the same, very unimaginative reading fare: has no-one started Ulysses or The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire or War & Peace or the other massive unread books ?
Roger, I just approved a comment by Cynthia who says her husband is on furlough and reading Barnaby Rudge! No idea why the government workers quoted in the Wash Post essay are reading “pop” and best-sellers. In truth, only three or four are quoted.