The Secret Escape Hatch of 2020

How the Goodreads Challenge offers a convenient escape

Boarding a plane always felt a little like an escape. An escape from the ordinary. An escape from routine. An opportunity to savor a new experience. With that option closed to me for at least the remainder of the year, I have to consider other ways of coping when life seems overwhelming and all I want is a change of scene.

This year, I returned to a childhood favorite: reading. It was always my great escape when one move after another landed me in new classrooms with new students, a strong sense of abandonment and instability, and no desire to continue connecting with people I was bound to lose. If I didn’t want to be somewhere, I would open a book.

It’s how I escaped a difficult childhood — reading at mealtimes, reading in my room, always a book close at hand. It’s how I coped with school. It was a rare thing to see me without my own special escape hatch in hand.

Today, I needed to escape.

Picture it: a small home in a small town. I was able to sleep in, thanks in part to a distance learning day, but I was up and making coffee when the screaming started. My son was in full-blown tantrum mode, and even though the autism spectrum diagnosis just came through and resources were becoming available, I was overwhelmed. The tantrum was over something so small and insignificant that I first had to process my shock that this was happening. Again. Before I even had my first sip of coffee, I dealt with screaming that hit higher and higher octaves, stomping that shook the top floor, and a full-blown panic attack.

The panic attack was mine.

No help is coming — at least, not today. This is on my shoulders, and there’s something about dealing with this at the start of my day that has me defeated before I’ve even begun. I finally took a sip of coffee.

This isn’t every day of my life, but it is far too much of it. I wait for some sense of relief, but it doesn’t come, not even when the screaming stops. There are still ten hours I need to cope with until they can be tucked into bed.

I remember, with the first small feeling of relief, the book I just got in from the local library. I finished a book the night before, and the new book sits waiting to be read, a bookmark perched hopefully on top. It is my escape — the way I can leave my house in the godawful year of 2020 and go anywhere.

During the last few years, reading took a backseat to my own writing and the rest of my busy life. I read when I had time, but I couldn’t read when I was busy shaping a plot of my own or in endless revisions for a plot I’d already written. I didn’t realize that a writing career could severely limit my lifetime book habit.

But this year, with much of my creativity stalled, I returned to that escape. Maybe borders were closed to me. Maybe I couldn’t jump on a plane at a whim. But books have no borders.

I discovered the Goodreads Reading Challenge at the end of last year, and I had set a modest goal for how many books I would read. I decided that I would read 25 books during the year. Considering I used to be able to read one a day, I thought 25 would be reasonable. At this point in the year with months to go before the end, I’ve read 47 — and reviewed about 45 of them. My TBR pile looms large, and yet it’s the one easy, manageable thing in this whole year.

I need something easy and manageable, some level of relief from the near-constant anxiety. Take a global pandemic, an election year, two children being diagnosed on the spectrum, falling income, and too much pressure on my creativity to make it viable — and you’ve got a perfect recipe for a breakdown. But I am not — yet — breaking.

I am reading.

I will read a chapter or two, and I’ll be able to return to my life, better able to spend quality time with my children after having had just a little relief. But for now, here’s my 2020 Goodreads Challenge reading list:

1. Astrid and Veronika by Linda Olsson
2. Zen in the Art of Writing by Ray Bradbury
3. Women in Sunlight by Frances Mayes
4. The Aviator’s Wife by Melanie Benjamin
5. Confess by Colleen Hoover
6. Once Upon a River by Diane Setterfield
7. The Dreams of Demons by Tarrant Smith
8. The Paris Hours by Alex George
9. Untamed by Glennon Doyle
10. The Two Lives of Lydia Bird by Josie Silver
11. The Boyfriend Project by Farrah Rochon
12. The Unhoneymooners by Christina Lauren
13. Evvie Drake Starts Over by Linda Holmes
14. The Overdue Life of Amy Byler by Kelly Harms
15. My Favorite Half-Night Stand by Christina Lauren
16. The Simple Wild by K.A. Tucker
17. A Poetry Handbook by Mary Oliver
18. Wild at Heart by K.A. Tucker
19. Until It Fades by K.A. Tucker
20. The Proposal by Jasmine Guillory
21. Fishing by Sarah Stonich
22. The Hygge Holiday by Rosie Blake
23. The Honey-Don’t List by Christina Lauren
24. Josh and Hazel’s Guide to Not Dating by Christina Lauren
25. Women Are Some Kind of Magic by Amanda Lovelace
26. One Summer by Roisin Meaney
27. After the Wedding by Roisin Meaney
28. I’ll Be Home for Christmas by Roisin Meaney
29. Erotic Stories for Punjabi Widows by Balli Kaur Jaswal
30. Love and Other Words by Christina Lauren
31. The Bromance Book Club by Lyssa Kay Adams
32. How to Find Your (First) Husband by Rosie Blake
33. Undercover Bromance by Lyssa Kay Adams
34. 500 Miles from You by Jenny Colgan
35. The Second Mother by Jenny Milchman
36. 99 Percent Mine by Sally Thorne
37. The Kiss Quotient by Helen Hoang
38. Beach Read by Emily Henry
39. The Bookshop on the Corner by Jenny Colgan
40. Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno Garcia
41. Little Beach Street Bakery by Jenny Colgan
42. Summer at Little Beach Street Bakery by Jenny Colgan
43. The Rosie Project by Graeme Simsion
44. Dating You/Hating You by Christina Lauren
45. Big Summer by Jennifer Weiner
46. The Bride Test by Helen Hoang
47. The Midnight Library by Matt Haig

Maybe this list will give you ideas for your own, or maybe you’ll dismiss mine out of hand because you don’t read these genres. Regardless, I wish you a handy escape when you need it, a beautiful book world you can disappear into when the world hurts a little too much, and peace amid the chaos.