Quarantine Reads Bonus Round

I recently posted on YouTube, 7 books I highly recommend if someone were to be interested in reading something pertaining to current events. The event of the year: Coronavirus. So these books are themed around being in isolation due to illness, pandemic disease, unexplained diseases (or rather weird powers suddenly summoned to change social dynamics), and humans (mostly men) being wiped out without explanation. Naturally, I thought of some additional reads to add to the list.

I thought of listing off the books I mentioned in the video, but no, you should go watch my video. I could use the viewership! And while you're there, please subscribe to my channel; I have a lofty goal of meeting the threshold of 1,000 subscribers by the end of the year so that I can monetize my channel. It's a pipe dream, no doubt, as I'm currently sitting just shy of 20 subscribers and I've been pumping out content for 2.5 months.

Please do indulge in these novels, both books listed in my video and the ones noted below. The books listed here are especially uplifting in some way, though they may be a bit more abstract conceptually.

The Illuminae Files (book 1: Illuminae) by Amie Kaufman & Jay Kristoff

All three books in this series have some touch of a disease, and tough calls need to be made as to who lives or dies. Relating to our real world pandemic:

- Serious isolation and quarantine action
- Illness spreading rampantly across a ship
- Search for effective termination of a viral (zombie-like) disease

Recursion by Blake Crouch

This is a tough book to summarize without spoilers. The "disease" in this book is first labeled as a false memory syndrome. At first it seems like isolated incidents, but quickly becomes wide-spread. Overall there are specific themes which parallel our current situation, though I will say the situation in Recursion is at least 1,000 times more alarming:

- Chaos among the masses
- Global issue which threatens public safety

An Absolutely Remarkable Thing by Hank Green

I end with Hank Green's book because it feels appropriate for the social media tie-in. This novel isn't so much about a disease running rampant, though a bunch of eerie robots are projecting dreams into EVERYONE's sleep. The SAME dream:

- There's a sense of community despite people being separated
- (Most) people band together to solve what seems to be an impossible task
- Social media, social media, social media...

All three of these novels left me with a sense of hope, which is why I felt the need to highlight them in a blog post. The quarantine will eventually be lifted and our lives will go back to routines, whether they be new or re-established. My hope is that the take-away from this experience will be a renewed sense of community. Though we are separated by screens, masks, gloves, and 6 feet of air-space, we are still connected.