“Is this what you used to do in the olden days?” asked my 6-year-old granddaughter, Natalie, watching me read a book by candlelight. I decided not to get into a lecture on chronology.

“Why don’t you read a book, too,” I suggested.

“Nah, I’m waiting for the television to come back on.”

And so it went for the six days “after the damage” as Natalie describes those days without power, when she spent the nights at my house in front of the gas fireplace.

For several days “before the damage” I had been reading World Without End, thrilled to discover that Ken Follett had written a sequel to one of my favorite books. It takes up where Pillars of the Earth leaves off and similarly paints a huge canvas of medieval England, filled with fascinating characters that the reader comes to know intimately. Secrets, betrayals, injustices, and murders exist alongside kindness, love, and sacrifice.

One of the main characters in this sequel is a woman who is both intelligent and passionate, and these traits make it difficult for her in a world where women are considered inferior property. Two brothers, one handsome and cruel, the other brilliant and kind, influence their surroundings in their own ways. The elder becomes an architect, designing a spire for the cathedral that will make it the tallest building in Europe. The younger becomes a knight and wages destruction for his own sadistic pleasure in the name of the king.

Continuing to read this book “a.t.d.” posed a couple of problems. For one thing, reading by candlelight or an L.L. Bean headlamp isn’t great for old eyes. This book is more than 1,000 pages long, a paperback, and oversized to boot, so it was hard to hold under the best of conditions. To sit on the couch, keep the book upright, adjust the light, and pull the blankets up proved challenging. But I was glad I had this escape, this transport away from my actual condition. Real time passed more quickly because I could spend it in fictional time.

One of the most interesting themes in the book is the conflict between religious and secular rule. The power of the church was immense. During the outbreak of the plague, the church refused to allow “modern” methods, such as isolating the victims. It clung to its belief in bloodletting despite the argument that the plague already caused bleeding. The tension between the two sides was palpable.

Although I was still loving World, it was physically exhausting to read it, so after a few days I switched to a slim paperback that my daughter-in-law had just read. Despite the possibility of its title, I knew The Glass Castle wasn’t about the Middle Ages. But in case I had any doubt, the first page made it clear: “I was sitting in a taxi, wondering if I had overdressed for the evening, when I looked out the window and saw Mom rooting through a Dumpster.”

In this memoir, Jeannette Walls describes growing up with an eccentric mother and an alcoholic father who regularly uprooted the family and led them into worse and worse circumstances. Reading about the poverty in which the author and her family lived made a gas fireplace and plenty of blankets seem like luxury. At one point she and her three siblings slept on cardboard mattresses with tarps over them to protect against rain pouring in through a hole in the roof. Their going with nothing but popcorn for three days made me stop whining about not being able to use the oven. The author’s father was a brilliant, charismatic man who was also destructive to both himself and his family. He broke furniture, stole money his children had worked hard to earn, and disappeared for days on end. I’m happy to say that even when cabin fever got to us, none of us broke anything (except for our black lab, Hattie, who kept to her usual quota of things knocked off the counter or table).

When I was inclined to feel sorry for myself, it was good to be reading about people who clearly had real problems and deserved sympathy. And the fact that the children left their abusive upbringing and escaped to more normal lives was assurance that we could certainly endure our temporary inconveniences.

I went back to medieval England. With only 100 or so pages left, it was even more of a challenge to hold onto the increasingly lopsided book and keep at least one hand under a blanket. The past became heavier and heavier. I finished the book just about the time the lights came back. I had enjoyed the experience, but I was ready to be out of the dark ages.

“Grandma, when you were a little girl, did you have a fridge?”