Literary Viral • April 2020

[AnotherCat]

Thanks sun surfer and Dazrin .

[Bookworm_Girl]

My first nomination is A Journal of the Plague Year by Daniel DeFoe.

From Goodreads:

In 1665, the Great Plague swept through London, claiming nearly 100,000 lives. In A Journal of the Plague Year, Defoe vividly chronicles the progress of the epidemic. We follow his fictional narrator through a city transformed-the streets and alleyways deserted, the houses of death with crosses daubed on their doors, the dead-carts on their way to the pits-and encounter the horrified citizens of the city, as fear, isolation, and hysteria take hold. The shocking immediacy of Defoe's description of plague-racked London makes this one of the most convincing accounts of the Great Plague ever written.

I will work on my other two nominations on Sunday. I have several ideas, and I am trying to decide.

[Bookworm_Girl]

Originally Posted by drofgnal

You recently had Station Eleven, that was a prophetic choice. I've always wanted to read the Andromeda Strain, having liked the movie. The Plague by Albert Camus would also be a good read.

When we were reading Station Eleven, there were some elements that I wondered how realistic they were and I was thinking that governments would be more prepared than the book depicts. Let's hope society does not break down to that extent! I never imagined that we would have insight into how prepared our global governments are 2-3 months later! Wow! I've been thinking about that book a lot since then.

[sun surfer]

About six hours left for nominations, though they may be open a little longer until I get the nominations list and voting ready.

[sun surfer]

My first nomination is The Dreamers by Karen Thompson Walker. I'm nominating this one because the thought of an outbreak of sleeping/dreaming/coma and subsequent quarantine enticed me. Goodreads, Preview, 320 pages, 2019, U.S.

In an isolated college town in the hills of Southern California, a freshman girl stumbles into her dorm room, falls asleep—and doesn’t wake up. She sleeps through the morning, into the evening. Her roommate, Mei, cannot rouse her. Neither can the paramedics who carry her away, nor the perplexed doctors at the hospital. Then a second girl falls asleep, and then another, and panic takes hold of the college and spreads to the town. As the number of cases multiplies, classes are canceled, and stores begin to run out of supplies. A quarantine is established. The National Guard is summoned.

Mei, an outsider in the cliquish hierarchy of dorm life, finds herself thrust together with an eccentric, idealistic classmate. Two visiting professors try to protect their newborn baby as the once-quiet streets descend into chaos. A father succumbs to the illness, leaving his daughters to fend for themselves. And at the hospital, a new life grows within a college girl, unbeknownst to her—even as she sleeps. A psychiatrist, summoned from Los Angeles, attempts to make sense of the illness as it spreads through the town. Those infected are displaying unusual levels of brain activity, more than has ever been recorded. They are dreaming heightened dreams—but of what?

Serendipitously, it begins with a quote from another of our nominations, Blindness.

[sun surfer]

My second nomination is Pale Horse, Pale Rider by Katherine Anne Porter. I'm nominating this collection because the descriptions sound romantic and haunting, so just down my alley. Goodreads, Preview, 205 pages, 1939, U.S.

First published in 1939, these three short novels secured the author’s reputation as a master of short fiction.

From the gothic Old South to revolutionary Mexico, few writers have evoked such a multitude of worlds, both exterior and interior, as powerfully as Katherine Anne Porter. This collection gathers together the best of her Pulitzer Prize-winning short fiction, including 'Pale Horse, Pale Rider', where a young woman lies in a fever during the influenza epidemic, her childhood memories mingling with fears for her fiancé on his way to war, and 'Noon Wine', a haunting story of tragedy and scandal on a small dairy farm in Texas. In all of the compelling stories collected here, harsh and tragic truths are expressed in prose both brilliant and precise.

[sun surfer]

My third nomination is The Samurai's Garden by Gail Tsukiyama. I wanted to nominate this because the story sounds vivid and softly captivating. Goodreads, Preview, 225 pages, 1994 , U.S.

The daughter of a Chinese mother and a Japanese father, Tsukiyama uses the Japanese invasion of China during the late 1930s as a somber backdrop for her unusual story about a 20-year-old Chinese painter named Stephen who is sent to his family's summer home in a Japanese coastal village to recover from a bout with tuberculosis. Here he is cared for by Matsu, a reticent housekeeper and a master gardener. Over the course of a remarkable year, Stephen learns Matsu's secret and gains not only physical strength, but also profound spiritual insight. Matsu is a samurai of the soul, a man devoted to doing good and finding beauty in a cruel and arbitrary world, and Stephen is a noble student, learning to appreciate Matsu's generous and nurturing way of life and to love Matsu's soulmate, gentle Sachi, a woman afflicted with leprosy.

[Bookworm_Girl]

I have had to work all day unexpectedly. I am working on remaining nominations now. Just wanted to let you know that I am working it and will post something shortly.

[Bookworm_Girl]

Still here. I have a long-list that I am now working to evaluate the international availability and cost...

[Bookworm_Girl]

My second nomination is Fever by Mary Beth Keane. I really enjoyed her book Ask Again, Yes which I read last year.

From Goodreads:

A bold, mesmerizing novel about the woman known as “Typhoid Mary,” the first known healthy carrier of typhoid fever in the early twentieth century—by an award-winning writer chosen as one of “5 Under 35” by the National Book Foundation.

Mary Mallon was a courageous, headstrong Irish immigrant woman who bravely came to America alone, fought hard to climb up from the lowest rung of the domestic service ladder, and discovered in herself an uncanny, and coveted, talent for cooking. Working in the kitchens of the upper class, she left a trail of disease in her wake, until one enterprising and ruthless “medical engineer” proposed the inconceivable notion of the “asymptomatic carrier”—and from then on Mary Mallon was a hunted woman.

Bringing early twentieth-century New York alive—the neighborhoods, the bars, the park being carved out of upper Manhattan, the emerging skyscrapers, the boat traffic—Fever is as fiercely compelling as Typhoid Mary herself, an ambitious retelling of a forgotten life. In the hands of Mary Beth Keane, Mary Mallon becomes an extraordinarily dramatic, vexing, sympathetic, uncompromising, and unforgettable character.

[Bookworm_Girl]

My third nomination is The Ghost Map by Steven Johnson. We struggle with literary non-fiction, but this book gets excellent reviews.

From Goodreads:

From Steven Johnson, the dynamic thinker routinely compared to James Gleick, Dava Sobel, and Malcolm Gladwell, The Ghost Map is a riveting page-turner about a real-life historical hero, Dr. John Snow. It's the summer of 1854, and London is just emerging as one of the first modern cities in the world. But lacking the infrastructure—garbage removal, clean water, sewers—necessary to support its rapidly expanding population, the city has become the perfect breeding ground for a terrifying disease no one knows how to cure. As the cholera outbreak takes hold, a physician and a local curate are spurred to action—and ultimately solve the most pressing medical riddle of their time. In a triumph of multidisciplinary thinking, Johnson illuminates the intertwined histories and inter-connectedness of the spread of disease, contagion theory, the rise of cities, and the nature of scientific inquiry, offering both a riveting history and a powerful explanation of how it has shaped the world we live in.

[Bookworm_Girl]

I thought I would share my list of other ideas. Some had availability or cost issues. Others sounded intriguing but too much like Station Eleven.

The Horseman on the Roof by Jean Giono

Dog Stars by Peter Heller

Wanderers by Chuck Wendig

Severance by Ling Ma

The Salt Line by Holly Goddard Jones

[sun surfer]

Originally Posted by Bookworm_Girl

Still here. I have a long-list that I am now working to evaluate the international availability and cost...

No problem; I was going to say take your time and I can wait if needed but you already finished lol.

Thanks for posting your other options too; they look interesting and I also thinks it's interesting that we only had one in common- Severance. I would've thought with us all looking for sickness books we might overlap more but it turns out there's a lot of books on the subject!


AnotherCat, did you want to use your last nomination on The Andromeda Strain? I can't nominate it for you and there's limited time left so you might not see this post in time, but it'll probably take me an hour or two before I have the nominations list ready to start the vote so if you post a third nomination before then I can include it.

[Bookworm_Girl]

AnotherCat already has 3 nominations. I think The Andromeda Strain was a recommendation should anyone else want to choose it.

Love in the Time of Cholera is the only book in the Literary Club history that I Did Not Finish. I don't know why I just stopped reading it. It's the type of book I normally enjoy. I recall that it was only available in paperback at the time and since has been released in ebook format. Maybe I should give it another go.

[Bookworm_Girl]

Originally Posted by sun surfer

Thanks for posting your other options too; they look interesting and I also thinks it's interesting that we only had one in common- Severance. I would've thought with us all looking for sickness books we might overlap more but it turns out there's a lot of books on the subject!

Blindness, The Dreamers, and Pale Horse, Pale Rider were also books that I had on my list.