Lockdown Reprised — Plus Some Pandemic-Themed Reads
Covid lockdown or the writing life — the shutters look much the same.
Well, here we are again: back in level 4 lockdown approximately 15 months after we exited it in 2020, with the Covid-19 Delta strain—not unlike a malevolent genie—out of its bottle and ‘out there’ in our NZ community. :-/
In some ways, given Delta’s degree of infectiousness (I think that’s a word) and the travel bubble with Australia, its arrival in the NZ community was probably only a matter of when, not if.
Having watched the degree of spread in NSW, in particular, I’m fully on board with the government’s decision to go straight to Level 4, particularly given NZ’s only in the early stages of the vaccine rollout.
As mentioned previously, the writing life is naturally self-isolating, so Level 4 means very little change in the day-to-day. Beyond, that is, seeing far fewer people around, when I look out the writing window.
For those for whom lockdown and staying closer to home means battening down the hatches with a good book, I thought I’d share a few suggestions for pandemic-themed reads:
Year of Wonders by Geraldine Brooks
The Plague by Albert Camus
The Andromeda Strain by Michael Crichton
Ammonite by Nicola Griffiths
The Dog Stars by Peter Heller
Havoc by Jane Higgins
The Animals In That Country by Laura Jean McKay
Station Eleven by Emily St John Mandel
Last Song Before Night by Ilana C Myer (the pandemic is more in the background, but it’s still a theme)
Doomsday Book by Connie Willis
I agree. With the travel bubble with Australia, it really was only a matter of “When”, not “if”. Hopefully a part of NZ can get out of lockdown soon.
I liked “Last Song Before Night” by Ilana C Meyer. I didn’t see it as a pandemic story but its been a while since I read it.
I’ve been reading “The Fated Sky” by Mary Robinette Kowal, and it is very good. A second book in a trilogy. Not pandemic related.
There is also “A Song for a New Day” by Sarah Pinsker. Pandemic related. I have it but have not yet read it. It won the Best Novel in the Nebula awards for 2020.
I feel terrible because somehow A Song for a New Day completely passed me by: O-o! So thanks for putting it on my radar, June.
Part of the background of Last Song before Night is a plague that gradually draws closer to the area in which the story is set, and affects the characters’ community, as the story progresses. It’s also been a while since I read it, but I recall the plague having magical origins and tying into the bigger story in that way, too.