Book Club of the Apocalypse

[spinbaby]

Since we’re cooped up with time on our hands, some of us nerds are reading pandemic-themed books and discussing on Facebook. First up is The Doomsday Book by Connie Willis. Andromeda Strain is up next.

[LiberalLoner]

1. Cool!

I’m rereading “the stand” myself.

[RockRaven]

2. Not quite pandemic themed, but I glanced over at my bookshelves and the first two I saw

which caught my eye as somewhat appropriate for these times were "The Great Deluge" by Douglas Brinkley (i.e. incompetent and slow government response to a disaster) and "The World Without Us" by Alan Weisman (i.e. what would happen to the world if all the humans suddenly disappeared).

[dhill926]

3. Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel...

just finished a few days ago. Really good and fairly current...

[japple]

4. I liked Station Eleven and have been thinking of re-reading it. Good thing I still have it on my

e-reader.

[japple]

5. Peter Heller's book, The Dog Stars

Blurb from amazon:

Hig somehow survived the flu pandemic that killed everyone he knows. Now his wife is gone, his friends are dead, and he lives in the hangar of a small abandoned airport with his dog, Jasper, and a mercurial, gun-toting misanthrope named Bangley.

But when a random transmission beams through the radio of his 1956 Cessna, the voice ignites a hope deep inside him that a better life exists outside their tightly controlled perimeter. Risking everything, he flies past his point of no return and follows its static-broken trail, only to find something that is both better and worse than anything he could ever hope for.

The ebook edition contains a reading group guide.

[hermetic]

6. I recommend The Last Policeman by Ben Winters

What's the point in solving murders if we're all going to die soon, anyway? Detective Hank Palace has faced this question ever since asteroid 2011GV1 hovered into view. There's no chance left. No hope. Just six precious months until impact.

The Last Policeman presents a fascinating portrait of a pre-apocalyptic United States. The economy spirals downward while crops rot in the fields. Churches and synagogues are packed. People all over the world are walking off the job -- but not Hank Palace. He's investigating a death by hanging in a city that sees a dozen suicides every week -- except this one feels suspicious, and Palace is the only cop who cares.

The first in a trilogy, The Last Policeman offers a mystery set on the brink of an apocalypse. As Palace's investigation plays out , we're confronted by hard questions way beyond “whodunit.” What basis does civilization rest upon? What is life worth? What would any of us do, what would we really do, if our days were numbered?

What indeed?

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

7. The first time I read The Doomsday Book

I wound up simultaneously checking facts about the Black Death in a Penguin book I had about it. She clearly did her research very carefully.

Since then I've gotten to know Connie. You might never guess from that book that she is one of the smartest, funniest, and acerbic persons on the planet. I get to see her at various science fiction things, lucky me.

[spinbaby]

8. She's quite a talent

I hadn’t read the Doomsday book in years. What struck me this time around was that phones and computers were still stuck in the early 90s.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

9. That is one serious criticism of the book.

To be fair to her, it came out in 1992, when cell phones were just getting started. But as the years roll on, that's a bigger and bigger flaw. Especially to someone reading it now for the first time.

Perhaps 15 or so years ago I read a novel in which not only did no one have a cell phone, but it apparently took place in an alternate universe in which answering machines had never been invented. The lack of them was very jarring, because people kept on calling or at least trying to call each other.

[trixie2]

11. I love dystopia

I think the YA books for teens is very current on trends/technology.

[trixie2]

10. The Galahad series by Dom Testa

YA series. I read it years ago and now want to reread it!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

When the tail of the comet Bhaktul flicks through the Earth's atmosphere, deadly particles are left in its wake. Suddenly, mankind is confronted with a virus that devastates the adult population. Only those under the age of eighteen seem to be immune. Desperate to save humanity, a renowned scientist proposes a bold plan: to create a ship that will carry a crew of 251 teenagers to a home in a distant solar system. Two years later, the spacecraft Galahad and its crew -- none over the age of sixteen -- is launched.

Link is here

[left-of-center2012]

12. 'The Pesthouse' by Jim Crace

Once the safest, most prosperous place on earth, the United States is now a lawless, scantly populated wasteland. The machines have stopped. The government has collapsed. Farmlands lie fallow and the soil is contaminated by toxins. Across the country, families have packed up their belongings to travel eastward toward the one hope left: passage on a ship to Europe.

Franklin Lopez and his brother, Jackson, are only days away from the ocean when Franklin, nearly crippled by an inflamed knee, is forced to stop. In the woods near his temporary refuge, Franklin comes upon an isolated stone building. Inside he finds Margaret, a woman with a deadly infection and confined to the Pesthouse to sweat out her fever. Tentatively, the two join forces and make their way through the ruins of old America.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/92555.The_Pesthouse

[kelly97]

13. Wow

Great recommendations. Thanks!