Longboat Key readers dive into historical fiction

Though the pandemic has taken much off the schedules of Longboat Key residents, one thing it has provided is time  to read.

The Longboat Library has been closed for a year, but volunteers are still adding new titles all the time. 

Longtime volunteer and former library employee Martha Wallace will read up to 50 books in a typical year, but as COVID has stretched attention spans thin, she read about 35 in 2020. This year she hopes to increase that number a bit again. Typically, her favorite books are historical fiction and she just started "American Dirt," a novel that follows a Mexican woman who leaves her life behind for the United States with her son. It came out in early 2020. 

“I’m finding during COVID that I’m catching up on some of my backlist of books that I hadn’t had time to get to,” Wallace said. “Not necessary old titles, just ones I haven’t gotten to.” 

Wallace recently finished "Lady Clementine," which she read and discussed virtually with the Longboat Library book club. It’s a fictional novel focusing on Clementine Churchill, Winston Churchill’s wife, and her role as his ferocious right-hand woman. 

“It was very interesting (and) I highly recommend it,” Wallace said. “She (author Marie Benedict) seems to feature writing about female historical figures who had played a significant role in their spouse’s life but haven’t necessarily had the attention that the spouse has.”

Library volunteer  Barb Torrence, like Wallace, prefers historical fiction, but likes to vary her books with a lighter read at times. She’s not one to pick up a fluffy beach read, like quick-read romances, however. She’ll take whatever she’s reading to the pool and relax in the shade.

“I think life is too short,” Torrence said. “I need to read all the good books out there. Do not waste your time. There’s too many good books out there.”

Usually, Torrence has an audiobook and a printed book going at the same time; she’ll listen to the former while walking the dog and read the latter in the evenings. Right now, "Pachinko" (a novel by Min Jin Lee about a Korean family who emigrated to Japan) is her audio selection and "My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She’s Sorry" (a Fredrik Backman novel about a young girl and her grandmother with a very close relationship) is her page-turner. 

She’s signed onto Goodreads and set up a 2021 reading challenge. Her goal is 20 books over the course of the year and she’s now on her third, having already finished "This Tender Land" and "Midnight Library." Now she’s on The Book of Longings, which tells the story of Jesus’ wife as she finds her voice in a desperate, yet hopeful, time. 

These Key readers have been able to access some titles from the Longboat Library, because they’re volunteers and have kept the place organized during the pandemic, but their other titles often come from the Marie Selby Library or Bookstore 1 in downtown Sarasota.