Like a lot of Ohians way back when, my grandfather was a factory man. And by factory I mean the candy factory, which was certainly more his speed. The rules were simple: he could eat as much chocolate as he could get his hands on as long as he kept the assembly line moving. My mom loved telling me this story as a kid because after a day of consuming chocolate nonstop, my grandfather had had enough, and moved on to pursue less tasty (but less nausea-inducing) lines of work. Too much of a good thing can sometimes be just too much. And I’m discovering this when it comes to screen time.
Don’t get me wrong, I love my screens. But now that they’ve morphed into my only means of connecting with the outside world, things are getting a little out of hand. So in an effort to diversify my stay-at-home entertainment portfolio, I have now turned to books. Not just any books, but fun, page-turner, beach read books. Books filled with mystery! Romance! Drama! And absent of anything Bad, given there’s enough of that to read already. My husband started and finished Sally Rooney’s high school drama Normal People in the span of two days, so that’s first on my list. And after that, Jenny Odell’s How To Do Nothing feels acutely appropriate. I’m also lucky because I got my hands on Brit Bennett’s new book, The Vanishing Half, and am about a quarter of the way through. But beyond that, I don’t know. On team ITG Utibe is splitting her time between Photographs Not Taken and James Baldwin’s Another Country, and Ali (bless her) is somehow powering through Infinite Jest. But that’s just us. Which beach reads are tiding you over? Are you even reading beach reads? What’s everyone reading these days?
—Ashley Weatherford
Photo via ITG.