Sunday, 5 July 2020

Emerging from lockdown in New Zealand

In New Zealand we have just emerged from COVID-19 lockdown. We are counting ourselves very lucky to live on this beautiful island at the bottom of the world, where our government decided to enter lockdown by ‘going hard and going early’. Our reported COVID numbers are now very low and we have been able to emerge from our house-bound bubbles and interact with friends and family again.

We had about two days warning before going into a level 4 complete nationwide lockdown. It was a weird, panic-fueled two days. From my library workplace I packed my car full of everything I could think of, so that I could remain productive through this time and get a backlog of book cataloguing and processing done at home. My little Toyota Corolla was packed to the gunnels as I drove off, not to return to my library again until six weeks later.

I was just going to pop in on this blog to talk about some fantastic new books I’ve been reading - but really, in the times we are in, one can’t just make a post without commenting on the climate we have been living through. I had also planned to abandon this blog this year, as I have started a new one specifically for Pinehurst School – but I haven’t quite been able to let go. I will keep dropping by to write short reviews about my favourite books. Putting the right book in the hand of the right reader has always been my great passion. 


14th April 2020. Loving this. We have been passing this one round the bubble. My turn now and I am loving it!

For some, lockdown has been a time when they’ve enjoyed the chance to get a lot of guilt-free reading done. Others found they just couldn’t settle and watching Netflix became the easier option. I need to read a lot to keep up with my job – so I steadily chugged through my to-be-read pile. I discovered some new favourites and discarded some half-read. In my next few blog posts I will cover reviews about the favourites. 

I particularly enjoyed having time to savour the beautiful 'Where the Crawdads Sing' by Delia Owens. All the hype is true on this fiction novel, for adults or older teens. It's just beautiful.

Zinga rating 5 stars

No comments:

Post a Comment