I’ve often found that bad things spark, yield, or provoke good things. I’d rather not have Covid, but I’m happy with at least one beneficial offshoot – I’m reading a lot more, and I’ve discovered many terrific books.

I’ve re-discovered Jess Walter, who writes about love and feelings in the warmest and most surprising ways. I’ve just finished two of his books, and they are both beautiful works of fiction: The Angel Of Rome, a collection of short stories, and Beautiful Ruins, as warm and touching a novel as I can remember.

Walter always manages to surprise, and his writing is gentle and wise, and poignant. He’s a masterful writer. I’ve been spending more time sitting down the past week, so I have more time to focus on reading; I often cannot do anything else.

I got a fascinating book for animal lovers for Maria – An Immense World by Ed Yong: How Animal Senses Reveal The World Around Us.

I can’t help but pick it up and peek – she hasn’t finished it yet. I know how this story ends – Yong has written a book everyone needs, but few animal lovers want to accept. The natural animal lovers keep trying to teach us.

This is yet another powerful book about animals that shows us how different they are from people. Yong details how animals see the world around them and what they see, from mice to elephants to dogs and cats.

None of them see what we see or reflect human perspectives and values. Every time somebody pets Zinnia, the dog owner says, “my dog will be so jealous when I get home.” But that is the farthest thing from the truth.

Dogs love to smell other dogs; that’s a good story, one they can flesh out and piece together. Through smell, they can recreate the lives of other dogs; something dogs love to do.

Because we suffer from envy and jealousy, we assume they do. We project our neuroses onto them. And animals suffer for it.

I was stunned to learn that animal rights activists in New York honestly believe it is cruel for large workhorses to work in regulated, cosseted existences. Horse trainers call the New York Carriage Horses the luckiest horses in the world; vet after vet says they are healthy and well-treated.

Yet the animal rights movement has spent millions of dollars trying to get the horses taken away from people and work and proper care and off into mystical and fictional “preserves” where they will spend the rest of their lives dropping manure all day.

And disappear from our lives.

This is in the name of loving animals. Because humans wouldn’t want to pull light carriages in Central Park,  workhorses must feel the same. They don’t.

I believe that is often the case with the runaway epidemic of pet separation anxiety, a neurotic whirlpool lining the coffers of drug companies. Hundreds of thousands of dogs, perhaps millions, are on anti-anxiety medication because we project our fears on them.

I have had a lot of dogs for many years – rescues and different breeds – and not one has suffered from separation anxiety or needed medication for it. Nor have we ever found our house torn to bits when we get home.

We get the dogs we need and project our human crap all over them.

In their natural habitats, dogs, like lions, will lie around in caves for most of the day and night, going out only to look for the good. They don’t know the difference between being left for one hour or three.

They spend much of their adult lives alone.

Dogs have no understanding of death, human or otherwise.

They may get frightened and disoriented when a loved human dies, but they don’t pine and mourn the way almost every dog owner insists they do.

Dogs are traditionalists; they love habit and routine and will cling to them as long as possible. Millions of dogs were rescued from Katrina and other natural disasters.

I know of none who starved to death pining for their previous life.

They live by instinct, not human emotion; this is a strong theme of  Long’s book.

A dog doesn’t know if the human has gone around the block or off to eternity. How could they? They have no idea what it means to die. They are different from us; they are not like us.

This is why I love them so much. No dog I know of thinks Donald Trump cares about the commoner, and Donald Trump has no love of dogs.

People keep dogs and cats alive beyond rationale or compassion out of guilt and fear that they will be hated for ending their lives. Just ask any vet what the worst thing about their practice is: it is watching dogs and cats suffer for years because people can’t let go of them, insisting that it is love.

I highly recommend Yong’s book.

He is a scientist, a thorough researcher, and a truth-teller.

But back to fiction: I just finished Beautiful Ruins this afternoon and am moving back to a mystery for a change of pace. There are no better mystery writers than British mystery writers, and Ruth Rendell is at the top of the heap.

I’m reading Adam and Eve And Pinch Me, one of her latest books. She’s a terrific storyteller in the British tradition.

There is never any Covid brain fog when I read.

So I have Covid to thank for these excellent and readable books and for rekindling my love of books, which often gets lost in the daily and distracting way of life. There is something good in almost everything.