Non-Fiction November - Week Three

 

Week 3: (Nov. 16 to 20) – Be The Expert/Ask the Expert/Become the Expert (Rennie of What’s Nonfiction): Three ways to join in this week! You can either share 3 or more books on a single topic that you have read and can recommend (be the expert), you can put the call out for good nonfiction on a specific topic that you have been dying to read (ask the expert), or you can create your own list of books on a topic that you’d like to read (become the expert).

This is one of my favourite weeks with Non-Fiction November. It's the week my wishlist really explodes!

I've been going through a Plague Lit phase recently. 

It took a while though. 

At the beginning of the Covid lockdown I read about how Albert Camus' classic The Plague (La Peste) had suddenly hit the bestsellers list again in France. I was amused and curious, but as the lockdown restrictions increased, and the virus got upgraded to a pandemic, it all felt too close, too real and too soon. 

But by June/July, the new Covid-normal was starting to feel, well, normal. My reading mojo returned and I found myself becoming obsessed to learn more about how previous generations had survived and thrived during and after a plague event.

I wanted to see if history could teach us some lessons.

It seems, though, that the main lesson history teaches us is that we fail, time and again, to heed the lessons of history!

My list of books is mostly full of fiction titles. I would now like to expand that into non-fiction. I'm particularly interested in learning more about the Spanish Flu of 1918-1920.

I'm hoping to learn more about the Russian Plague of 1770 - 1772 when I read Robert K Massie's book about Catherine the Great, but would be keen for more recommendations.

The Polio outbreak in the US (and elsewhere) is also something I'm curious about (after seeing a fascinating bio about Roosevelt a few years ago). Any Australian books that talk about what happened here during the 30's, 40's and 50's would be of interest.

Live Science, back in March of this year, listed the 20 worst epidemics and pandemics in history. My non-scientific explanation for the difference between a plague and a flu is that a plague is usually caused by a bacterium whereas the flu is viral. Both cross over from animals to humans. The concern right now is that antibiotics work on bacterium but not on viruses and that as we, as humans, encroach on more and more land once the sole domain of animals, more viruses will cross over.

In the list below you will also notice that most flu events last, on average, 2-3 years and that viral flu epidemics have been on the increase over the past 100 years.

1. Prehistoric epidemic: Circa 3000 B.C.
2. Plague of Athens: 430 B.C.
3. Antonine Plague: A.D. 165-180
4. Plague of Cyprian: A.D. 250-271
5. Plague of Justinian: A.D. 541-542
6. The Black Death: 1346-1353
7. Cocoliztli epidemic: 1545-1548
8. American Plagues: 16th century
9. Great Plague of London: 1665-1666
10. Great Plague of Marseille: 1720-1723
11. Russian Plague: 1770-1772
12. Philadelphia yellow fever epidemic: 1793
13. Flu pandemic: 1889-1890
14. American polio epidemic: 1916 - 1956
15. Spanish Flu: 1918-1920
16. Asian Flu: 1957-1958
17. AIDS pandemic and epidemic: 1981-present day
18. H1N1 Swine Flu pandemic: 2009-2010
19. West African Ebola epidemic: 2014-2016
20. Zika Virus epidemic: 2015-present day

My Previous Plague/Pandemic Reads:

• The Plague | Albert Camus
• The Stand | Stephen King
• Moloka'i | Alan Brennert (Leprosy)
• All Fall Down | Sally Nicholls (The Black Death) YA
• Hamnet | Maggie O'Farrell (The Plague)
• Oryx and Crake | Margaret Atwood
• Year of Wonders | Geraldine Brooks (Great Plague of London)
• The Pull of the Stars | Emma Donoghue (Spanish Flu)
• A Journal of the Plague Year | Daniel Defoe (Great Plague of London)
• Intimations | Zadie Smith (non-fiction Covid-19)

My Current Plague Reads:

• A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century | Barbara Tuchman (non-fiction The Black Death)

Up Next:

• Pale Horse, Pale Rider | Katherine Anne Porter (Spanish Flu)

Plague/Pandemic Fiction Books On My Radar:

• Station Eleven | Emily St John Mandel
• Blindness | José Saramago
• The Last Man | Mary Shelley
• Nemesis | Philip Roth (Polio)
• Love in the Time of Cholera | Gabriel Garcia Marquez
• The Years of Rice and Salt | Kim Stanley Robinson
• The Dog Stars | Peter Heller
• The Pest House | Jim Crace
• The Children’s Hospital | Chris Adrian
• Severance | Ling Ma
• Fever 1793 | Laurie Halse Anderson (Philadelphia Yellow Fever Epidemic) 
• The White Plague | Frank Herbert
• The Passage | Justin Cronin
• Company of Liars | Karen Maitland (The Black Death)
• The Decameron | Giovanni Boccaccio (The Black Death)
• The Decameron Project 2021 | (Covid-19)
• The End of October | Lawrence Wright

Non-Fiction On My Radar:

• The Ghost Map: The Story of London's Most Terrifying Epidemic—and How It Changed Science, Cities, and the Modern World | Steven Johnson (Cholera pandemic 1846–1860 - obviously not bad enough to make the top 20 list above!)
• Black Death | Philip Ziegler (The Black Death)

I'm happy to learn about the science around each and every epidemic, pandemic or plague, but I'm more interested in the human stories. 

How did the plague or epidemic affect the lives and livelihoods of the average person? How did it spread? How did the people and their governments react to the crisis? What myths and propaganda grew up around them? What methods did they use to control the spread? How did each one eventually end? What was the price that the town/city/country/continent paid during and afterwards - economically, culturally, spiritually, artistically and medically?

Non-fiction is the name of this game, but if you also know of any fabulous fiction not already on my list, then please add that in the comments below as well.

My 2014 Holocaust and Coco Chanel Be the Expert post is here.
My 2017 Holocaust Be the Expert post is here.
My 2018 Napoleon & the French Revolution Become the Expert post is here.

My 2019 Japan Be the Expert post is here.

The Pull of the Stars | Emma Donoghue #HistoricalFiction

 

After reading a number of slow, reflective reads lately, I needed something a bit easier and faster. The Pull of the Stars fit the bill nicely. It was easy to read, even with the rather detailed 1918 midwifery and autopsy scenes that left me gasping and wincing in sympathy!

In keeping with my current Plague Lit phase, this is a book about the 1918-19 influenza that devastated the entire world as World War One was coming to an end. 

The book charts three days on the maternity/fever ward in a hospital in Dublin, Ireland, with Nurse Julia Power and her young volunteer, Bridie Sweeney. The hospital is extremely understaffed, and Nurse Power is working a room barely bigger than a cupboard with just enough space for three beds. Power has already had the fever and recovered, as is now considered immune.

Donoghue weaves in all the rumours and myths that surrounded the Spanish flu including it being a 'miasma' coming off all the dead bodies from the war in France, a religious judgement about said war, the consequence of so many people travelling or 'milling about across the globe', or an alignment or influence of the stars (hence the name of the book).

My reading tended to focus on the points of connection or similarity between then and now. On her way in to work, Power notices 'so many shops shuttered now due to staff being laid low by the grippe...many of the firms that were still open looked deserted to me, on the verge of failing for lack of custom.'

There were the contrarians who didn't like having their personal freedoms curtailed for the greater good and therefore, chose to believe that the effects of the flu were being exaggerated. There was suspicion about government propaganda and oodles of old wives tales about how best to prevent catching the flu - from using eucalyptus oil, carrying raw garlic in your pocket or around your neck, gargling brandy, eating an onion a day, carrying rosaries and other charms and amulets.

The science was not as quick as it is now, but facts about the nature of the Influenza constantly changed and evolved as more research and tests were done. As now, this added to some people's confusion and allowed conspiracy theorists to thrive. The Spanish flu was referred to by numerous names such as the great flu, khaki flu, blue flu, black flu, the grippe, or the grip, the malady, and the war sickness.

The government propaganda signs were confusing, contradictory and often laughable. 

A new foe is in our midst: panic. The general weakening of nerve power known as war-weariness has opened a door to contagion. Defeatists are the allies of disease.

The public is urged to stay out of public places such as cafes, theatres, cinemas and public houses. See only those persons one needs to see. Refrain from shaking hands, laughing, or chatting closely together. If one must kiss, do so through a handkerchief. Sprinkle sulphur in the shoes. If in doubt, don't stir out.

The Government has this situation well in hand and the epidemic is actually in decline. There is no real risk except to the reckless who try to fight the flu on their feet. If you feel yourself succumbing, report yourself, and lie down for a fortnight. Would they be dead if you stayed in bed.

The Pull of the Stars was a great holiday read (I read it in two days lying on the beach). I learnt probably more than I ever need to know about certain birthing matters and I was curious to learn about the colour phases of the flu's development - from red to brown, to blue, to black, that Donoghue used to create her chapter headings. Overall, an engaging read with plenty of parallels to our times.

Facts:

• Donoghue is Irish born but now lives in London, Ontario, so The Pull of the Stars will probably appear on many of the Canadian literary prizes starting with this year's longlist for the Scotiabank Giller Prize.
• On her website, and in her author's notes at the back of the book, Donoghue said,

A personal note: I began this novel in October 2018, inspired by the centenary of the Great Flu of 1918-19, and I delivered the final draft to my publishers in March 2020, two days before COVID-19 was declared a pandemic. In researching the Great Flu, one fact that leapt out at me was that women before, during and for weeks after birth were particularly vulnerable to catching and suffering terrible complications from that virus. I’ve put into this story some of the labour dramas of women I know (and one of my own), and all my gratitude to frontline health workers who see us through our most frightening and transformative experiences. I could have set The Pull of the Stars anywhere, but I went for my home town of Dublin partly because Ireland was going through such a fascinating political metamorphosis in those years, and because I wanted to reckon with my country’s complicated history of carers, institutions and motherhood.

 

• Dr Kathleen Lynn (a secondary but memorable character) was a real life rebel doctor whose worked focused on the well being of infants and their mothers.
• Bridie's back story, as well as that of one of the young mum's in the ward with Nurse Power, were based on real life events as told to the 2009 Ryan Commission and discussed in this article here.

Other Books by Donoghue:

• Slammerkin
• Room 
• Sadly Frog Music was a DNF

Previous Plague/Pandemic Reads: 

• The Plague | Albert Camus
• The Stand | Stephen King
• Oryx and Crake | Margaret Atwood
• Year of Wonders | Geraldine Brooks

Current Plague Reads:

• Journal of a Plague Year | Daniel Defoe
• A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century | Barbara Tuchman (non-fiction)

Up Next:

• Intimations | Zadie Smith (non-fiction)
• Pale Horse, Pale Rider | Katherine Anne Porter

Plague/Pandemic Books On My Radar:

• Station Eleven | Emily St John Mandel
• Blindness | José Saramago
• The Last Man | Mary Shelley
• The Ghost Map: The Story of London's Most Terrifying Epidemic—and How It Changed Science, Cities, and the Modern World | Steven Johnson (non-fiction)
• Nemesis | Philip Roth
• Love in the Time of Cholera | Gabriel Garcia Marquez
• The Years of Rice and Salt | Kim Stanley Robinson
• The Dog Stars | Peter Heller
• The Children’s Hospital | Chris Adrian
• Severance | Ling Ma
• The White Plague | Frank Herbert
• The Passage | Justin Cronin

The Plague | Albert Camus #ReadtheNobels

What does one read during a pandemic that has changed the way we all live our lives? 

The Plague (La Peste) by Albert Camus of course! 

This existentialist (or absurdist, depending on who you talk to) classic from 1947 presents us with the day to day changes that occurred in a small city in Algeria when the plague suddenly turned up out of the blue.

The French Algerian town of Oran experienced real life plague events in 1556, 1678 as well as three lesser outbreaks in the early 1900's. Camus wrote his fictional version of The Plague during and after WWII. Since then many have drawn parallels between the coming of the plague in his book and the Nazi's. I'll leave that for students of English and Philosophy to mull over, but for today, this review will focus more on the parallels between what we're all experiencing now with Covid-19 and what the imaginary characters of this real town experienced during their fictional plague.

But first a little reminder about the definition of existentialist literature. 

Existentialism is all about the experience of the individual - the thinking, feeling, acting, living human being - as they navigate an absurd, meaningless world with a sense of confusion, angst, anxiety and disorientation. It is the individuals responsibility to make sense of the world, not society or religion.

While Absurdism is the conflict between the human tendency to seek some kind of inherent value and meaning in life with our inability to actually find any in a purposeless, meaningless, chaotic and irrational universe! Camus was an Absurdist and believed we should live a life rich in 'purposeful experience' in spite of the 'psychological tension of the Absurd'.

The fictional plague in Oran began with the sighting of one dead rat by Dr Bernard Rieux on the 16th April. It was considered to be 'odd' by the doctor and 'a practical joke' by the concierge. The next day there were three dead rats. The doctor was now 'intrigued' while the concierge hung around the doorstep waiting to catch the 'jokers'. However on his rounds, the doctor realised that the dead rats were everywhere and that 'the whole district was talking about the rats.' Most people agreed that it was 'peculiar, but it will pass.'

By the next day the papers had picked up the story and the authorities started to talk about 'emergencies measures.'

In the population, some people complained, some were disconcerted, some felt threatened or anxious. People began to accuse the authorities of inaction and others escaped town completely. Rumours spread along with a sense of foreboding. 'Surprise gradually gave way to panic.'

Mistaken ideas had to be readjusted as new information about the rats and the plague were learnt the hard way...with people dying. Old habits and daily routines had to change and fear set in. 

Dr Rieux was keen to prepare and take precautions, whilst the authorities tried not to upset public opinion. However, hygiene posters popped up around town, gas was injected into the sewers to kill the rats and the water supply was strictly supervised. Hospital wards were 'suitably equipped' and relatives of patients were urged to get tested.

Some people began to suggest the whole thing was exaggerated and refused to change their ways. Trams were still packed and the theatres and restaurants were full each night as many chose to defy the odds and thought that somehow the plague would not affect them.

As things worsened, the ports were closed and guards were set on the town gates. The people blamed the authorities and prioritised 'their personal concerns.' Discussions raged about whether everyone was actually dying of the plague or of other causes instead or even whether this number of deaths was within the normal range for the month.

A sense of unreality crept in. Some bewailed their fate, while others 'accepted with good humour'. Monotony and indifference became factors as the 'dreary struggle between the happiness of each individual and the abstractions of the plague' set in.

Summer arrived and the heat served only to exaggerate the fear and anxiety. 'The plague sun extinguished all colours and drove away all joy.' Yet for some 'a sort of crazed excitement, an uneasy freedom' bubbled up, sending them out into the streets, craving pleasure and company, despite the risks.

A vaccination was talked about, with very few understanding the 'industrial quantities' that would be required to actually inoculate the general population. 

Our good doctor believed that most people were more often good than bad and that the main vice was ignorance, especially 'ignorance that thinks it knows everything.' 

There were no longer any individual destinies, but a collective history that was the plague, and feelings shared by all.

As more people became sick and died, exhaustion and indifference set in. People began to neglect the good hygiene practices of before and mass burials became the norm. Irrational superstitions and old prophecies and predictions emerged. At this point, Camus, via his characters went into a lengthy discussion about the nature of good and evil, the meaning of life and death and the lessons that could be learnt from history, yet never seem to be learnt.

As the course and nature of the plague changed, ebbed and flowed and eventaully eased, people reacted with a curious mix of excitement and depression. The uncertainty was the hardest thing to live with, yet saved up reserves of hope were always close to the surface. People began to wonder what life would be look like after the plague. Would it return to 'normal'? What had been changed irrevocably?

'The plague would leave its mark, at least on people's hearts.'

'All that a man could win in the game of plague and life was knowledge and memory.'

Camus leaves the ending open. Deliberately, I suspect. 

We don't get to see the end of the plague in Oran, yet reading this 70 years later, we know that this fictional plague and all the earlier historical plagues did in fact, eventually disappear. So much so, that when another one appears in 2020, we have no knowledge or memory to help us work out what to do! 

It's like each generation has to learn everything anew all over again, ad nauseam, instead of learning from history. One gets a sense that every generation thinks it is somehow immune, separate, different or special compared to any previous generations and that there is nothing that those older times could possibly teach us now. Our refusal to not see the repeating patterns of history is nothing but wilful ignorance. 

I'm only part of the way into Absurdism with Camus, as I believe it IS possible to find some meaning in the chaos if you only pay attention to the history.

Facts:

• Born 7th November 1913 in French Algeria
• Died 4th January 1960 
• Was living in Paris when the Germans invaded during WWII. 
• Unable to join the army due to his earlier tuberculosis diagnosis, so fled to Lyon, then Oran with his wife, where they taught in the local primary school.
• On medical advice he moved to the French Alps to help his tuberculosis. Started writing La Peste.
• In 1943 returned to Paris and joined the French Resistance. 
• Became friends with Jean-Paul Sartre. 
• Greatly influenced by Simone Weil. He saw her writings as an antidote to nihilism.
• Camus wrote in cycles - each cycle being a novel, an essay and a play. 
• The first cycle, Sysyphus was about the absurd (L'Étranger, Le Mythe de Sysiphe, and Caligula). 
• The second cycle, Prometheus, was revolt (La Peste (The Plague), L'Homme révolté (The Rebel), and Les Justes (The Just Assassins) 
• The third cycle was love, Nemesis (Le Premier homme (The First Man)
• My Popular Penguin Classic was translated by Robin Buss.
• Introduction by Tony Judt.
• Camus was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1957.
• He asks: Is it possible for humans to act in an ethical and meaningful manner, in a silent universe?
• In his notebooks, Camus suggested that the book ‘may be read in three different ways’:
• It is at the same time a tale about an epidemic; a symbol of Nazi occupation (and incidentally the prefiguration of any totalitarian regime, no matter where), and thirdly, the concrete illustration of a metaphysical problem, that of evil.

Favourite Quotes:

• There have been as many plagues in the worlds as there have been wars, yet plagues and wars always find people equally unprepared.
• "This rotten bastard of a disease! Even those who don'y have it, carry it in their hearts."
• "What is true of the ills of this world is also true of the plague. It may serve to make some people great. However, when you see the suffering and the pain that it brings, you have to be mad, blind or a coward to resign yourself to the plague."
• "I have decided to reject everything that, directly or indirectly, makes people die or justifies others in making them die."
• He knew what those jubilant crowds did not know but could have learned from books: that the plague bacillus never dies or disappears for good; that it can lie dormant for years and years in furniture and linen-chests; that it bides its time in bedrooms, cellars, trunks, and bookshelves; and that perhaps the day would come when, for the bane and the enlightening of men, it would rouse up its rats again and send them forth to die in a happy city.

Book 9 of 20 Books of Summer Winter

The Covid Chronicles #4

I confess I was a little nervous about our return to Sydney.

During our road trip, Mr Books and I enjoyed a great deal of natural isolation as we traversed long stretches of lonely highways and byways. All the small country towns were taking the whole social distancing thing seriously, with markings on the floor so people didn't stand too close together in shops. The restaurants and cafes that had chosen to stay open with takeaway only menus had tables set up at the front door, so you could order and pay, then step right away to wait for your meal/coffee and to let the next person come up. In one small town pharmacy I heard a lovely young sales assistant pleading with an elderly customer to go home and to call them for anything and they would then home deliver. It was a bittersweet moment. The elderly customer appeared confused about the whole thing. Her weekly trip to the chemist was obviously an important social outing. She didn't want to phone in an order, she wanted the human contact. Zoom was not on her radar.

Now there's a brand name I never knew until a few weeks ago. Zoom.
And now it's everywhere. Even my mum is Zooming.

But back to Sydney and my growing nervousness.

As we got closer and closer to Sydney we kept seeing and hearing on the news about how Sydney-siders were failing at the whole social distancing thing. From young people crowding onto Bondi Beach to backpackers partying in hostels and bus shelters. B19 had also been telling us about how busy our local high street still was. I didn't feel ready to deal with so many people being so close together. But seeing how happy B19 was to see us home safe and sound made it all worthwhile.

As the start of the Australia-wide lockdown loomed large, the comments on social media began to change.

There were the militant #staythef*ckathome hashtag warriors who upset all the essential workers who couldn't stay at home, even if they wanted to. Then people with eating disorders popped up asking everyone to stop talking about how fat they were going to get by the time this lockdown finished. Finally, the work-from-home people got upset about the folks who championed how to spend your time in lockdown to better yourself - learn a new language, play an instrument, bake bread or create a podcast!

The weekend we arrived home (the last weekend in March), was the weekend that the NSW lockdown was announced, beginning Monday night. The new rules looked like this:

The only lawful reasons to leave the house are to work, study, to shop for food or other essential items, access medical care or exercise alone or with one other person.

We have been told theses rules could stay in place for 90 days.

We did a bigger than normal grocery shop to stock up on essentials, so that we wouldn't have to pop into the supermarket every day, like we had become accustomed to over the years. We also arranged a visit with B22 and his GF in case we couldn't see them again for a while. It was weird preparing for something that we had never experienced before, especially as the messaging about what we could or couldn't do, changed almost on a daily basis. We wanted to be prepared and to take it seriously, but there was also that typical Aussie disdain or wariness towards authority - let's not go overboard here mate! We'll be alright. Surely all these rules don't actually apply to me!

I had to laugh at a man, probably not much older than me, at the supermarket that first night home. The staff had just put circles on the floor at the registers so we could line up social distance-style. This man could NOT stand on the circle. He stood near it, around, in front of it, behind it, but never on it. No-one was going to tell him where he could stand!

Now we were back in Sydney with B19 and seeing for ourselves how city-siders were coping with the change, we could see straight away that there were a fewer cars on the road. A number of shops were closed (some, sadly, for good) and in the case of restaurants and cafes, only open for takeaway, but other than that, things looked the same as when we went away two weeks earlier.

Many elderly folk seemed to be struggling to understand what was happening. We noticed them out and about in the country AND in the city. I'm not sure if the message hadn't got through, if they didn't care or if felt like they had no other options. Certainly the stories on the news still felt surreal and 'out there', rather than right here and now.

You can see on the graph above, how the last weekend in March was our last big spike of new confirmed cases. This may be skewed by our strict testing criteria, but since community transmission has been low all along, it seems like it's fairly indicative of the actual numbers. The Ruby Princess cruise ship has accounted for a significant number of these cases. They have now had 16 passenger deaths and over 600 confirmed cases, including members of the crew, still stranded on the ship. There were also about 900 international passengers who jumped on board planes back home, not realising that they could be carrying the virus back with them. A criminal investigation is underway to find out why nearly 2700 passengers were allowed to disembark (and disperse all over Australia) even though people on board clearly had Coronavirus-like symptoms.

Mr Books and I, are essentially, optimistic and positive souls. I'm more introverted than Mr Books. We both enjoy spending time with our friends and family, out and about doing stuff but we're also happy being cosy at home. We're independent, self-sufficient creatures, capable of finding ways to amuse ourselves and fill our days. The idea of a lengthy lockdown didn't particularly phase us, but that first day, Monday the 30th March, was still weird. Very weird.

The Covid Chronicles #1
The Covid Chronicles #2
The Covid Chronicles #3

#JustSaying - Stay Calm & Read

Photo by Viktor Forgacs on Unsplash

Jennifer @HoldsOnHappiness wrote a post recently about keeping calm in a world suddenly gone mad. Her simple solution was to stockpile books, not toilet paper. And tea.

It would seem that all the end-of-the-world stories I've read over the years, have seeped into my subconscious, as I would have to self-isolate for well over a year before I even went close to running out of unread books or tea!

But it got me thinking, what WOULD I read if my family had to go into quarantine thanks to one of us being exposed to Covid-19?

Plagues and pestilence have been the scourge of human life since time began. Which reflects the extraordinary number of stories that have been written about this topic since then. As soon as we started recording and remembering stories, natural disasters got the starring role. For instance, plague and pestilence visit the characters on the battle field in Homers' The Iliad. You'll also find a far bit of this going on, with the whole wrath of God behind it, in the Old Testament stories as well.

Giovanni Boccaccio went there in the 1350's after the Black Death with The Decameron, as did Geoffrey Chaucer in The Canterbury Tales. Daniel Defoe gave us Journal of the Plague Year written in 1722 and in 1826 Mary Shelley wrote The Last Man.

More modern takes include Katherine Anne Porter's Pale Horse, Pale Rider (which sounds fascinating by the way - a 1918 Spanish flu story), Albert Camus' The Plague, Gabriel Garcia Marquez's Love in the Time of Cholera, Geraldine Brooks' Year of Wonders, Kim Stanley Robinson's The Years of Rice and Salt, Peter Heller's The Dog Stars, Chris Adrian's, The Children’s Hospital, Ling Ma's Severance, and Philip Roth's Nemesis (a polio outbreak story).

If man-made bio-disasters are more your thing then you could try Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake trilogy, Frank Herbert's The White Plague, Emily St. John Mandel's Station Eleven, Dean Koontz' The Eyes of Darkness, Justin Cronin's The Passage and Stephen King's The Stand.

But would we really turn to plague-lit as a form of comfort during these trying times?

According to Buzzfeed last week, the 2011 movie Contagion is now the second most watched Warner Bros movie and the tenth most popular Apple iTunes movie. Maybe it should be reclassified as a documentary?

If I had 2-3 weeks off work, where I had to stay quietly at home I would have no trouble filling my time. I have several unopened jigsaw puzzle boxes, cupboards full of our favourite DVD's (for when Netflix falls over due to high demand!) and mountains of unread books. But I do feel sorry for my more extroverted friends. Two weeks stuck at home is their worst nightmare!

I might be tempted to reread King's The Stand. But I'd like to think I would use the time more fruitfully and finally tackle some of those more challenging books on my TBR like, Ducks Newburyport by Lucy Ellmann and Milkman by Anna Burns. Or maybe I will finally read all those delightful Angela Thirkell books stacked under by my bed for reasons of pure comfort and escapism.

Have you prepared your self-isolation reading list yet?
What are you looking forward to reading if you suddenly get two weeks at home?

For more Bookish Covid-19 posts try BethFishReads food post and Paula's positive spin here.