Time to Read

According to this article by Alison Flood at The Guardian, directions to self-quarantine, maintain social distance and stay at home have led people to understand they have more time to read books. Which has led to increased book sales, both at brick-and-mortar stores before increased restrictions closed them and ordered online.

Flood interviewed some people who figured the down time was a good opportunity to consume not just bestseller fiction but some of the major literary works that we were always told we were supposed to read but never got around to. Stephen King is tackling James Joyce's daunting Ulysses and another reader George Eliot's hefty Middlemarch.

Obviously readers and lovers of literature can appreciate the consequence of this societal shutdown even while we don't care much for its cause. But I'm concerned. Given that King is in a phase of his career in which he is barely if at all reined in when it comes to word count and manuscript length, I am not sure it's the best idea to let him explore a 260,000-word account of one single day in Dublin.