In the TED Talk “What Reading Slowly Taught Me About Writing,” Jacqueline Woodson explains not only some of her reasons for reading but how people around her had different views on reading. One of Jacqueline’s reasons for reading is the feeling of being immersed in the stories and reading slowly as an author‘s hard work slowly unfolds.  

This reason is significantly one of the main reasons I enjoy reading. I’ve read the book series of “Heroes of Olympus” a few times and each time I lose track of time. Even short books that are a little over 100 pages seem to last for what felt like decades and affected me years after reading such stories. Taking your time to read a book just makes the experience better. The words start to project a cinema of our mind, and the stories start to get more exhilarating because it’s as if I’m watching a movie. 

Reflecting back on Hotel Corona, it starts to relate to the current situations much more. Not specifically on the religious aspect but the different backgrounds and ages coming together to ease some of the distraught that quarantine has brought to everyone. At the time of listening to the podcast I couldn’t relate nor did I have an experience similar but as time went on I started noticing that everyone is trying to interact with each other through different means. A few cases of this are discord servers I joined where there are people organizing online Netflix parties open for anyone to join and the people in the server would vote on what movie they would want to watch. Additionally the same concept but with video games. A lot of people have friends that they play with that are either in the military, busy with college, or just sick and join discord servers to make new friends and play games together. Overall this unforeseen epidemic is taking its toll on the physical and mental health of society and people are trying to alleviate it by reaching out to each other, making new friends,and being kind.