Let’s be honest, you’ve probably got a little free time on your hands right now. And while you’re supposed to be balancing your new teaching responsibilities (if you have school age children), adjusting to working from home, and making sure to get plenty of exercise (trips to the fridge count, right?), you might as well spend some time catching up on your reading list.
And if you don’t have one, well, I have five perfect recommendations for these crazy times.
1. The Great Influenza (John M. Barry)
While the current pandemic may seem overwhelming, the influenza pandemic of 1918 was truly terrifying. Striking during World War I, the virus moved across the globe at breakneck speed, and inflicted much of its damage on the young and healthy. Nearly a third of the worlds population was infected, and millions were killed.
Barry sets the stage by exploring the advances in medicine leading up to 1918, and how the medical community was finally armed with modern scientific methods for battling the virus. A sweeping, epic book that tells the story of the pandemic from the point of view of the scientists who were charged with defeating it, it will truly make you appreciate today how we have the tools to fight back against disease.
2. A Gentleman in Moscow (Amor Towles)
If you thought being stuck at home for a few months was bad, try a lifetime of being stuck inside the same hotel. That is the premise behind A Gentleman in Moscow, a breathtaking novel about the life of Count Alexander Ilyich Rostov. In 1922 Russia, Rostov is deemed an unrepentant aristocrat by a Bolshevik tribunal and sentenced to house arrest in the famous Hotel Metropol in Moscow. A wealthy and well educated man, he is forced to leave his luxury suite and is forced to stay in the servants quarters.
The book wonderfully uses its surroundings to explore what a man will do when left on his own, and how he can find a purpose in his life when hope may seem lost.
3. The Andromeda Strain (Michael Crichton)
One of Crichton’s early novels, this tells the story of a terrifying organism from space that crash lands on Earth in a satellite and decimates a small town. A team of scientists transport the survivors to an underground facility and begin to uncover the mystery of how and why they were spared, and what the microbe from another world is capable of.
Gripping storytelling from one of the great science fiction writes will keep you riveted, and thankful that we are not under siege from a microorganism from above.
4. Destiny of the Republic (Candice Millard)
Another book that will make you grateful for the medical care we have today, this book follows the life and death of president James A. Garfield. The story covers Garfields humble beginnings, through the civil war, and up to his nomination as president, a nomination he took only reluctantly. However, after only 4 months in office he was attacked and shot by Charles Guiteau, a mentally deranges lawyer, at a railway station in Washington, D.C.
While Garfield survived, the next eleven weeks proved to bring about his demise as doctors tried to save his life. Ultimately he succumbed to an infection brought about by unsterilized equipment by doctors probing for the lodged bullet. A wonderful book about a great man and president who was ultimately lost to inadequate medical care.
5. Recursion (Blake Crouch)
A new disease seems to be spreading around the world. Not an illness of the body, but the mind. People suddenly and unexpectedly wake up with memories of an entire life they never lived, believing they have left behind those that never existed. People are driven to insanity and suicide as they grapple with a reality that doesn’t seem to be theirs. A New York City detective and a neuroscientist get sucked in and must determine the source of the illness, and discover the true power of memories.
A roller coaster from start to finish, this is Crouch at his best. A mind-bending thrill ride that will leave you not wanting to put it down, this book is a must for those boring nights at home.