KITastrophe: Yearlong-Epidemics and Pandemics

Welcome to our Year Long KITastrophe read about Epidemics and Pandemics. Some of you participated in April 2020...doesn't that seem like ages ago? What a year!
For some reason, there is a core group of us who find this topic fascinating even as we experience a pandemic ourselves. I've added a few books that I discovered recently including one that is coming out in February. Can't wait to see what others come up with. Post as you finish. Hopefully many of us will get to multiple books on the topic this year. Don't forget to update the Wiki
https://wiki.librarything.com/index.php/2021_KITastrophe#Year-Long:_-_Theme:_Epi...



Last year's wiki https://wiki.librarything.com/index.php/KITastrophe#March:_Epidemics_and_Famine
Reading Through Time 2020 Wiki https://wiki.librarything.com/index.php/Reading_Through_Time_Challenge#AUGUST_20...

You can find a good LT list here https://www.librarything.com/list/938/all/Top-Stories-About-Epidemics

In addition to the usual diseases we consider, other conditions have garnered the moniker of epidemics. For instance the Opioid Crisis of the late 20th/early 21st c. and the Mental Health crisis being recognized in the 21st c. Although those were labeled such in the US, the widespread suffering was found around the world.
Some ideas to get you started. There are so many more. Can’t wait to see what everyone chooses this year!

Non-Fiction and Memoir
The Dancing Plague: The Strange, True Story of an Extraordinary Illness by John Waller 1518
1666: Plague, War, and Hellfire by Rebecca Rideal 1666 England Plague
The Ghost Map: The Story of London’s Most Terrifying Epidemic — and How It Changed Science, Cities, and the Modern World by Steven Johnson 1854 London—Cholera
Love in the time of Cholera
Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History --1918 Influenza
Breath: A Lifetime in an Iron Lung by Martha Mason North Carolina 1948 Polio
Polio: An American Story
And the band played on : politics, people, and the AIDS epidemic by Randy Shilts AIDS
How to Survive a Plague: The Story of How Activists and Scientists Tamed AIDS by David France AIDS
The Hot Zone and Crisis in the Red Zone by Richard Preston Ebola
Fevers, Feuds, and Diamonds by Paul Farmer Ebola
Fever 1793 Yellow Fever
The American Plague: The Untold Story of Yellow Fever, The Epidemic that shaped our History By Molly Caldwell Crosby
Typhoid Mary: Captive to the Public’s Health by Judith Walzer Leavitt Typhoid Fever
China Syndrome by Karl Taro Greenfeld SARS
American Crisis by Andrew Cuomo Covid-19

General Pandemics
Pandemic: Tracking Contagions, from Cholera and Ebola to Beyond by Sonia Shah
Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic BY David Quammen
The Coming Plague by Laurie Garrett

Opioid Crisis
Dopesick
Pain Killer by Barry Meier
Mental Health
Anatomy of an Epidemic: Magic Bullets, Psychiatric Drugs, and the Astonishing Rise of Mental Illness in America Mental Health

Fiction
Year of Wonders by Geraldine Brooks 1666 England The Plague
Frog Music by Emma Donoghue 1876 San Francisco--Small Pox
Pale Rider: The Spanish Flu of 1918 and How It Changed the World by Laura Spinney
The Great Believers by Rebecca Makkai 1985 Chicago AIDS
Cherry by Nico Walker Opioid crisis

Futuristic, Sci Fi, Dystopian
Zone One by Colson Whitehead
The Stand by Stephen King
The Line Between: A Novel by Tosca Lee
Station Eleven by Emily St John Mandel.
A Beginning at the End By Mike Chen
The End of October BY Lawrence Wright

Good idea to post the link to last year's wiki for additional ideas.

Thanks for this list of suggestions. I'm not sure yet what I have on my tbr, but even though this is a year-long theme, I'm thinking I should pick out one or two to keep in mind for the year.

Not sure what I will read. You have a lot of great suggestions, thank you!

I can also say that Dreamland: The True Tale of America's Opiate Epidemic is a great book.

My favorite read of 2020, Hamnet by Maggie O'Farrell also features the plague theme.

>4 thornton37814: Oh I meant to put that on the list! Thanks for reminding me.

>5 beebeereads: One more that would be good to add is The Summer Country by Lauren Willig. It features a cholera epidemic. It was one of last year's best for me also.

>6 thornton37814: Thank you...another bullet for me!

I found a couple of possibilities from my tbr, but looked further, so now I have too many to choose from! LOL!

From my tbr:
The Passage / Justin Cronin
The Marrow Thieves / Cherie Dimaline

Others I've just added to my tbr:
The Coming Plague / Laurie Garrett
Spillover: Animal Infections... / David Quammen
A Prayer for the Dying / Stewart O'Nan

I can see me picking "Spillover" in whatever month we do Q for AlphaKIT. :-)

Not as good as good as Station Eleven, but a worthy read: Clade by James Bradley.

Another new book I just heard about
My Lifelong Fight Against Disease: From Polio and AIDS to COVID-19
I don't know how readable it is, but the author interview was very interesting.

And another
MY EPIDEMIC: An AIDS Memoir of One Man's Struggle as Doctor, Patient and Survivor I don't have any info on this one either, just popped up as a rec on Amazon. Thought I'd share.

I am reading Station Eleven for this as I was meant to read it for SFF in 2020 and I really want to get to it.

Pale Rider: The Spanish Flu of 1918 and How it Changed the World / Laura Spinney
3 stars

The subtitle pretty much tells you what the book is about. I listened to the audio. The male British narrator is always a warning for me, and that warning “fit”. My mind wandered in and out, and it was interesting in parts. In addition to a broader outlook, the author looked at different countries around the world and how it affected those countries. I think I lost interest a bit more looking at the countries individually than looking at the pandemic in a broader sense. It sure was interesting to see the parallels to today – one of those parallels being the health measures that governments try to take with varying results of compliance.

My epidemic/pandemic reading to this point has been in scifi + horror (zombie variants, so far) -
Contagion and Immunity by Erin Bowman
The First Days by Rhiannon Frater
Severance by Long Ma

>13 okeres: Those are great suggestions for the rest of us. An interesting way to go to meet this challenge. I just heard a discussion of Severance yesterday and now your mention here. Maybe the universe is nudging me. Sci/Fi is not my playground, but once in awhile I venture in.
Thanks for posting.

I read Wickett's Remedy by Myla Goldberg . It was a book about the 1915-1919 Spanish Flu pandemic. I really wanted to like this book, but in the final analysis, it was fairly bad. This was the story of Lydia, a very young widow (no grieving) who signed up to go to Gallops Island, 6 miles from Boston, to care for soldiers who contracted the flu and/or who had volunteered to "catch" it for medical observation. It is true that Gallops Island was used to house sick sailors/soldiers, but there is no evidence of medical experiments. The story is very simplistic. A group of the dead from the peanut gallery speak up frequently in the margins of the book. Also, there are diary pages of the owner of QD Soda. I'm not even sure how this related to the story, except that it was the right time period. These things detracted, instead of added to an already weak story. 384 pages 2 1/2 stars

The Fate of Rome by Kyle Harper includes three pandemics--the Antonine Plague (probably smallpox), the Plague of Cyprian (unknown, maybe a hemorrhagic fever?), and the Plague of Justinian (definitely bubonic)--in a dense but readable discussion of how natural factors impacted the decline and fall of the empire.

There are two books I read last year that I highly recommend for this thread:

The Plague Years by Daniel Defoe (read the intro and appendices first to get an idea of what I was getting into)
Locked In by John Scalzi, which is pretty much a police procedural in a sci-fi setting after a plague that causes people to be "locked in," and the changes in society as a result.

I'll check out some of these recommendations, too. The subject intrigues me, strangely enough.

>16 susanna.fraser: Oh, I have finished that. too, and forgot to post it here. A great read.

Michael Lewis has just published a book The Premonition which tackles our current pandemic. Its getting mixed reviews, but I might try it some time this year. I'm behind in my KITastrophe reading because other titles keep snagging the next up spot on my TBR!

And because of this challenge, I purchased a copy of The Great Mortality last weekend while I was browsing, by myself (no partner, guardian, friend to reign in my book-buying!) at the newish bookseller at our local Renaissance Festival. Yippee! Can't wait to start it.

I finished Pull of the Stars last week. I am glad I read it, but not sure I would recommend for everyone. If you are put off by graphic medical descriptions, this is not for you. I tolerate those images very well so I appreciated the glimpse into the medical world of 1918 Dublin during the Influenza pandemic. Donoghue takes the reader through harrowing days and restless nights describing the duties of one nurse in minute detail, sometimes highlighting almost barbaric procedures, but also the inventiveness of a war-like environment.

Pacing played a huge role in this novel. She includes commentary on political conflict and describes the way post war stress (now PTSD) played out in different ways. I did feel that the ending was rushed. I would have preferred to spend more time with the characters, but I understand the author’s intent and appreciated that she stayed true to that design.

I read Michael Lewis's The Premonition, a look at the current pandemic through the experiences of assorted doctors, scientists, and public health officers who had early and strong insight into what was happening.

These 2 novels fit the theme -

Survivors by Terry Nation
The Orphan Collector by Ellen Wiseman

Wow. Finished The Great Mortality a few nights back and it is phenomenal.

Kelly gives a thorough historical background about the source of the infamous flea and its origins, as well as a town-by-town and city-by-city overview of how it spread. He also describes the two separate types of Plague (pneumonic and Bubonic) as well as the horrific pogroms carried out against Europe's Jews (said to be poisoning the wells).

He does tend to interject his personal thoughts and feelings onto historical characters, though he also uses contemporary sources to revisit their observances on what was happening around them.

>23 nrmay: >24 threadnsong: Thanks for adding to our growing list of suggestions. I expect to be reading for this theme each year as it falls squarely in my wheelhouse. I am always collecting new titles!

Recently finished Afterland by Lauren Beukes.
Near-future sci-fi novel with pandemic theme.

Also -
The White Plague by Frank Herbert
The Dog Stars by Peter Heller

Bookriot https://bookriot.com/ published a newsletter this week about pandemic reading. Here are some of the links they included. Many titles we've listed here already, but there are also many more to choose from and links to some interesting discussions about pandemic reading.

https://bookriot.com/best-pandemic-books/
https://bookriot.com/books-about-the-plague/

I recently finished Doomsday Book by Connie Willis, which features both a near-future flu epidemic and also the Black Death in the 1300s. Very good.

>28 antqueen: Loved "Doomsday Book"!

>27 beebeereads: Thank you for these links, beebeereads. I read Journal of the Plague Year in spring, 2020 and was blown away by it. Just like picking up a newspaper and reading the effects of our own plague in real time.

>30 threadnsong: Thanks! Added to my list.
I also heard about an author this morning John Aberth who has written a number of books about medieval medicine, mostly focused on The Black Death. Doctoring the Black Death: Medieval Europe’s Medical Response to Plague Sorry no touchstone. It's not in my sweet spot, but I know many of you enjoy early history. I loved Year of Wonders so that was an outlier for my usual reading, but it was fiction.

I read Lifelines: a Doctor's Journey in the Fight for Public Health I included it here because so much of the story included epidemics (AIDS, H1N1 Flu, Ebola and Covid-19) I have to say I didn't learn much that I hadn't gleaned from news reports in the past**, but I did find her story compelling. Dr. Wen has a distinct family history which contributes to her passion for public health. She tells her story well and puts her experience in context as she relates the public health crises of the past few decades.

**remember I am a total news junky :-)