I’m sure that I speak for all of us when I say that the pandemic has greatly skewed our sense of time. It feels like there’s more time to spend, and as such we are expected to devote it to pursuits that will yield some long-term (usually material) benefit. At the same time, the past six months have revealed that we don’t have that much time, whether we’re giving our all to school and work or we’ve experienced loss after loss. Regardless of how you define having “more time”, all of our schedules have changed, and in my case, the cancellation of in-person classes in March left me with more space in my schedule to read.
I genuinely love books – a lot. My dream job as a kid was to be an author, and even now that dream still lingers although it has manifested in a different form (being a journalist is like writing a collaborative book over an extended period of time, okay?). Beyond the act of reading itself, I love absorbing myself in conversations about something I’ve read or nerding out over advance reader copies and the publishing industry. So, it was only natural that I fell back into old habits once quarantine began. Shortly after that came the idea to do a books column – a space to ramble about literature and how the media I consumed while growing up impacted me.
So, here it is. Tada!
You’re probably wondering – what’s up with the name?
Names are, in part, what draw us to certain books in the first place. Sure, everyone says, “don’t judge a book by its cover”, but if a book cover doesn’t match its title, isn’t that equally disconcerting? The title of this column reflects a part of me as well as a part of Duke. I named this column “Loop Lit” because I imagine myself sharing my thoughts with a friend while sipping milkshakes from The Loop, my favorite on-campus restaurant. We are not having an academic discussion, nor am I solely writing reviews of what I read. It’s just me talking about life in the context of the written word. The less flowery way of saying that is I’m making text-to-world connections.
I hope you’ll join me here once a month (or twice if I’m feeling ~spicy~) at the metaphorical Loop, at least until we’re no longer in a pandemic and can hang out in person.
Loop Lit runs once a month on Tuesdays or Thursdays.