Sally juggles baby books with reading more grown up fare

 Edited BY


G P Kennedy


Sally - London, UK


My reading during the pandemic hasn't changed drastically but it has since I had a baby.


I loved reading and sometimes could read about 3 or 4 books a month but since having Iris nearly 18 months ago I think I have read 2 books and, to be honest, I couldn’t tell you the storyline from either of the books.  I just don’t have the time or even the brain capacity to read at the moment.



 I mainly read chick-lit books and would buy them by looking for the ones sold in supermarkets that were on offer, or 3 for the price of 2.  I would never read the blurb on the back but pick them either by authors I knew or how brightly their covers were.  I own approximately 400 books (although I still store them in my childhood bedroom my parents' house, when I say store I sneak them there every time I went back to their house as we don’t have room in our flat in London) and I pride myself for only buying about 4 books out of the 400 that were so bad that I couldn’t finish them.


 Over the last few years, my reading genre has changed a bit and I am open to reading different styles.  A few years ago a friend of mine committed suicide and one of his late posts on Twitter was about a book he had read called Reasons To Stay Alive by Matt Haig, I wanted to read it to see if it would shed some light on to way my friend felt like this was his only option.  This book is the only non-fiction book by this author but I have gone on to read all his fiction books as well.




About 3 years ago I saw a post on Facebook about a book that a friend really recommended called “A Little Life’ by Hanya Yanagihara, a fiction book about suicide, again I think friends of Billy’s were trying to understand why.  It’s a really hard read and it’s the first book that I have cried when reading but it’s also a brilliant book and one that I recommend highly.


 Then a few months later I saw another Facebook post about an online book exchange. You reply to the post and then are given the name and address of one person to post your favorite book to. You are then given another address for people replying to your post on Facebook asking for friends to join in and then in turn they give your address out to people replying to their post.  So you only give away one book but can receive lots of books from strangers.  I must have gotten about 20 books delivered ranging from classics such as Pride and Prejudice to David Jason’s autobiography.  There are some that I still haven’t read but I was surprised by the ones I did like and enjoyed.

The two books I have read since having Iris are The Handmaids Tale and the follow on book The Testaments both by Margaret Atwood, I received one of these for my birthday in 2019 and the other for Christmas the same year.


 My books now are ones that I read to the baby and they involve most Julia Donaldson ones including The Gruffalo, Zog, and Room On A Broom.


So, yes, I guess you can say my reading habits have changed in the last year ha-ha. Stay safe and lose yourself in a good book.



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