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.
