Pile

Here’s a pile of around half the books that I read in 2020. I think last year was the first since I was very small that I read more books than I added new ones to my shelves, principally because for the past nine months I haven’t been browsing in charity shops.

One really great outcome from this is I’ve dug deep into my waiting to be read shelves, and even re-read some old favourites for the first time in many years. I bought my copy of Wild Seed in 1991 in the student bookshop at Lancaster University, similarly Red Tails in Love was gathered at the tail end of the last century. I’d include both in my favourites of the year.

None of which was the big news of the day. 16yo and I have both received notifications to self isolate from the Covid-19 app as we had apparently been in contact with someone who had just tested positive. The alerts arrived at the same time but while I was told to self isolate for seven days, 16yo was advised to sequester for five. This made us more than a little curious. Once we had worked out what the dates of supposed contact was we were even more curious, as 16yo had been inside my house for that whole day. 

On further reflection we think it is likely our supposed contact has been through the walls of my house. I live in a mid-terrace back-to-back so I have three other households just a fairly thin brick wall away. Looking at my phone I can see that I can pick up bluetooth devices in other houses, showing that the Covid-19 app could indeed have made a connection in that way.  

All of this is conjecture though, and unless I find out for sure that one of my immediate neighbours has just tested positive for Covid, it seems the right thing to do is to keep myself to myself for the next week. So a bit more reading time.