As predicted, we are once again closed, although by the time you read this we may be open again. The best advice we can give is to regularly check our website or Facebook page for the most current information. If you live in town, our outside signs will also display our open or closed status. These are trying times for all of us and I find when I am in a situation like that, it is good to read how others have made it through similar times whether they be real or fictional. Vulture.com recommends the following as good books to read during a pandemic, ranging from the historical to the futuristic.
1. A Journal of the Plague Year by Daniel Defoe (1722) takes us way back to the very beginnings of the novel as a form of literature. Defoe writes about the bubonic plague’s effect on the city of London 50 years after it happened. Roughly one quarter of its population died in the span of 18 months. Defoe draws upon historical documents to write a realistic account of the plague’s effects and the novel still has the power to unsettle as he addresses issues such as quarantining family members.
2. Years of Rice and Salt by Kim Stanley Robinson, (2002) also uses the bubonic plague as a stage to launch a narrative about its effect on Europe in the 14th century.
3. Pale Horse, Pale Rider by Katherine Anne Porter (1939) is set around the Spanish flu pandemic in 1918 and focuses on a young woman falling in love with a soldier, as both influenza and World War I loom ominously. (Season 2 of Downton Abbey also takes us into that territory.)
4. Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez (1985). The author of this book received inspiration from the first novel on our list whilst writing his own work about an epidemic and an enduring love story.
5. Journals of the Plague Years by Norman Spinrad (1988). Similar to Marquez, Spinrad was also influenced by Defoe’s work as shown by the title of his novel which deals with HIV and AIDS in the 1980s.
6. Station Eleven by Emily St John Mandel (2014) is set in the wake of a devastating strain of the flu, which kills 99 percent of humanity. The book’s structure juxtaposes scenes of survivors of the epidemic with the sudden end of the world as we know it, as the Georgian flu wreaks havoc. Mandel’s story is an ultimately hopeful one, focusing on the ways art endures.
7. Find Me by Laura Van Der Berg (2015) is set against the backdrop of an epidemic that erases the memories of those infected — where the search for a cure might be even more harrowing than the disease.
All of the above books can be found on Tracpac.ab.ca where you can place a hold. During the closure(s), curbside pick up will be available Tuesday – Thursday from noon to 4pm. If those times do not work for you, please call the library to make alternative arrangements. It is interesting to see what books have come because of previous pandemics throughout history, and I cannot help but wonder what we may see gracing our fiction shelves in the near future that have been written as a response to the events of the past year. We’ll have to wait and see.
