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Book List: Social Distance at the End of the World

We’re getting a little stir-crazy at home, already. School, initially intended to be closed through April 13 due to the coronavirus outbreak, will now be closed til May 1, and frankly, I’m not sure the three of us are going to make it. There are a lot of jokes out there about introverts finally getting the alone time they need, but even my daughter, who can happily disappear for hours under blankets, texting her friends, watching videos, and reading in various formats, is upset about missing school.  There are, I think, very few people who don’t ever want any other people around. It must be something that catches writers’ imagination, though, because there are many stories and books out there about a single individual, or maybe a small group, left alone after the end of the world as we know it.  I’ve seen a bunch of lists for books about pandemics or their aftermath that suggest the same books more than once (The Last Man by Mary Shelley, Station Eleven by Emily St. James Mandel, The Stand by Stephen King, A Journal of the Plague Year by Daniel Defoe,  The Andromeda Strain by Michael Crichton, to name a few). These are not so much books about pandemics as they are about isolation (or escape from) others, and I’m going to try and offer a few you might not have found on other lists.


1984 by George Orwell. The only thing that’s more disturbing than the way the members of society are set up against each other in this book is that things were about a million times more poisonous in the Soviet Union.  No one can trust anyone else; it’s social distancing as a lifestyle. I recently read the middle-school novel The Story That Cannot Be Told, by J. Kasper Kramer, which, while not entirely historically accurate, described the paranoia involved in just living daily life in Romania before Ceausescu was overthrown, which turned families, even parents and children who loved each other, against themselves in a way you don’t really see in 1984 as Winston is alienated from everyone around him and has no family.

Allison Hewitt Is Trapped by Madeline Roux. This is Roux’s first book, from before she switched to YA fiction, and it starts with bookstore employee Allison Hewitt, trapped in the break room at the bookstore with her coworkers after zombies take over. blogging her story. Thank goodness for the escapism of the Internet, right? This novel actually started as an experiment in fiction, with the entries actually published as a blog, when the publisher noticed and offered Roux a contract.

The Decameron by Giovanni Bocaccio. Seven young women and three young men are escaping the plague of 1348 together in a house outside Florence, Italy. Over the course of 10 days, each individual tells 10 stories, for a total of 100 stories, some tragic, some comic, some erotic. There are worse ways to spend your time when you’re keeping your distance from potentially deadly disease. Bocaccacio wrote for the common man, which in his time meant he wrote in Italian instead of Latin. There are translations out there that will make it easier on you that the version you can download for free, if you want to check it out.

Hollow Kingdom: A Novel by Kira Jane Buxton takes on the point of view of an intelligent animal, one who doesn’t really fit in anywhere: S.T., a tame crow.  Something has happened to his human, and maybe all the humans; they seem ill, are disintegrating, and have developed a taste for raw meat.  The animals, without opposable thumbs, are mostly trapped inside their owners’ houses. It’s kind of like The Secret Life of Pets with a lot less cutesy animation and a lot more unattached body parts, violence, foul language, and junk food.

I Am Legend by Richard Matheson. This book was awarded Vampire Novel of the Century by the Horror Writers Association in 2012. and shows the damage people take when they are really, truly, distanced from each other.

Kingdom of Needle and Bone by Mira Grant. Dr. Isabella Gauley’s niece was the index case for  Morris’ disease, which appears to be measles at first, but eventually compromises the infected person’s immune system. The only way to keep people from getting infected is for them to go into a permanent quarantine before they get the disease. Based on the content of this novella, I’m going to go out on a limb and say that Mira Grant has strong opinions about vaccination and affordable healthcare.

The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury. There’s so much back and forth of humans and Martians trying to connect, distance themselves, or both, in this book, but the standout story on social distancing (although not the best story in the book) is “The Silent Towns”, in which a man who believes he is the last man on Mars after the colonists have abandoned it, discovers there is also a woman on Mars… but upon meeting her, decides he’d rather live alone.

 

It’s a bummer that the library is closed, but you can probably find these as ebooks through Overdrive, Libby, or Hoopla in the library’s digital collections. If not, you can always consider buying them! If you click on the image, it should take you to Amazon and, if you order from there, the site might actually make some money! Enjoy!

 

 

Posted on March 21, 2020 by , Reply

Book Review: The Poe Estate (The Grimm Legacy, Book 3) by Polly Shulman

The Poe Estate (The Grimm Legacy, Book 3) by Polly Shulman

Nancy Paulsen Books, 2015

ISBN-13: 978-0399166143

Available: Hardcover, Kindle edition, audiobook, audio CD

 

This, sadly, is the last book in a trilogy where the real star is not any particular character, but the New-York Circulating Material Repository, a combination library/museum/pocket dimension of fictional objects. The first book, The Grimm Legacy, introduced high school students Elizabeth Rew and Andre Merritt, who were hired to work as pages in the Repository, as they discovered magical objects from fairytales and fantasy. The second book, The Wells Bequest, introduces science geek Leo Novikov and explores fictional objects found in science fiction tales. This third book, The Poe Estate, ventures into the world of Gothic and early horror fiction. It takes place years later, after Elizabeth has become a librarian. She and Andre travel New England looking for haunted objects and houses to store in the repository’s Poe Annex (a detail I loved was that in order to reach the Poe Annex, visitors must first travel through the Lovecraft Corpus, which is just as creepy and atmospherically terrifying as you would expect). However, unlike the first two books, we get a first-person narrator, sixth grader Sukie, whose protective older sister Kitty died from an inherited blood disease from her mother’s side of the family, the Thornes.  Kitty haunts Sukie, still compelled to protect her even after death. Sukie and her parents, suffering financially, move into Thorne Mansion, which is in a sad state of disrepair, with their mother’s very elderly cousin, Hepzibah Thorne, and Sukie soon discovers another ghost haunting the house.  After meeting Elizabeth and Andre at a flea market, Sukie discovers that the house, and members of her family from generations past, appeared in an unfinished Gothic novel. Sukie, Andre, and Elizabeth go on a treasure hunt, passing through the Lovecraft Corpus, visiting the Spectral Library (a fictional library with a ghostly librarian, containing fictional books that exists inside a story: examples of fictional books include the Necronomicon and The King in Yellow, both of which are better handled by a ghost than a human being), and traveling through the Poe Annex, which contains not just haunted houses, but haunted ships, haunted trains, and haunted islands. There are enough Easter eggs in this book to give any fan of Gothic and early horror fiction plenty to delight in, and the metanarrative is kind of fascinating, although it’s also somewhat confusing.

I personally am absolutely delighted to see the names of some of these lesser-known stories (such as “Afterward” by Edith Wharton and “The Wind in the Rose-Bush” by Mary E. Wilkins Freeman) and authors appear in a middle grade novel, and I love the Repository and its collections. However, Sukie’s story as a girl dealing with grief over the death of her sister, financial difficulties at home, and bullying at school, whose elderly cousin is being pursued by unscrupulous developers, gets shafted by the author’s need to incorporate the Repository into the narrative. Jonathan Rigby, the villain from previous books, doesn’t get much space in the story, and the conflicts and relationships don’t get the attention they deserve. Sukie’s story is definitely a middle-grade story, but its intersection with the Repository storyline mostly derails it in favor of dropping names that might not be familiar even to many adults. Shulman could get away with this in The Grimm Legacy, because most kids have a basic familiarity with fairytales, but I don’t think it works here.

If you are an adult who loves the idea of  fantastic libraries or getting to step into favorite stories (visiting the House of Usher, flying on a broom from Young Goodman Brown, tracking down Captain Kidd’s treasure) then this is a really fun book.  Unfortunately, I think a lot of it will go over the target audience’s head. Polly Shulman does provide a list of authors and titles mentioned in the text, and she got me interested enough in Hawthorne to look some of his stories up (The Scarlet Letter successfully turned me off to Hawthorne in high school), but I have trouble seeing kids in elementary or early middle school  actively seeking these stories out on their own. This isn’t great writing, but it’s a lovely tribute with an enjoyable concept,  one of those books that is best shared between an adult who loves the genre and the kids in their lives.

 

Posted on January 14, 2020 by , Reply

Musings: Read What You Want: The Genre Reader’s Bill of Rights

I’ve always disagreed with romance readers that their genre gets the least respect of any, because look at the way horror readers and writers get treated.  There’s this perception that horror writers must be terrible people to come up with the kinds of stories they do (so many are surprised to find how kind and generous many are, and also how many are teachers), and that the readers are mostly loser teenage boys. Women and girls who like horror get incredulous looks, like, why would they read stuff in a violent genre that frequently portrays them as victims? If you live entirely inside the horror fan community maybe you don’t get these baffled looks and prejudiced opinions about your reading and writing, but maybe, like me, you have to interact with people who don’t get why you would read or write or review this stuff.

I am not solely a horror reader, though. I read a lot of different types of books. I could give you a list of all the genres and topics and styles that I read in but it would be really distracting and isn’t really my point.   There is no shame in reading what I want to read. And so when I come across a group of readers and writers in a genre I read mocking another genre (like romance) I’m pretty done with it. I have been reading romance since I was a teenager, long before I was a mother, and I object to having it described as “mommy porn”.  Nor am I a fan of the extremely outdated perception of romance being read only by clueless housewives. The horror fiction genre should be so lucky as to get the number of authors published and create the kind of money and level of fandom that romance fiction does.

One reason for the existence of this website was that my husband, Dylan, saw a gap in what libraries offered to readers, and in what librarians knew about horror fiction, and he knew that horror could attract kids and teens to reading who had never shown any interest in picking up a book. Horror can kickstart reluctant readers, and librarians and libraries needed to know that (they still do). Romance can also kickstart readers, though, and just like a love of horror can create a bridge between generations (something you can see in my son even though Dylan is now dead) discovering romance can, too. It’s been a year and a half since my daughter would sit down with me to read aloud, but every night since I introduced her to Marion Chesney, she has begged for me to read “just one more chapter”.  Luckily, Chesney wrote around 40 books before switching to writing mysteries as M.C. Beaton.

I’m not defending romance because it doesn’t need defending. The evidence of its success is right out there for the world to see.  I don’t defend my choice to read horror because it doesn’t need defending. I can read what I want and it doesn’t matter to me what you think about me reading it. But maybe think about why readers of a genre might think their genre needs defending. It’s because somebody, or a lot of somebodies, tried to shame them or tell them their choices weren’t good enough, or were evidence of a personality flaw, as if what they’re reading makes it okay to mock them.  It doesn’t.

You have the right to read the genre book of your choice. And, whether that genre book is horror, mystery, thriller, romance, historical fiction, science fiction, fantasy, dystopian, non-fiction, poetry, or something else,  everyone else has the right to read the genre book of their choice as well.

And so as a reminder,  I’m sharing again The Genre Reader’s Bill of Rights, which can also be found elsewhere on this site.

 

The Genre Readers Bill of Rights

  • You have the right never to apologize for your reading tastes.
  • You have the right to read anything you want.
  • You have the right to read anywhere you want… in the bathtub, in the car, in the grocery store, under the porch, or while walking the dog.
  • You have the right to read in bed. Under the covers. With a flashlight.
  • You have the right to carry books in your baggage at all times.
  • You have the right to read in exotic settings.
  • You have the right to move your lips when you read.
  • You have the right to read the good parts out loud to your nearest and dearest.
  • You have the right to refuse to read the good parts out loud to your nearest and dearest.
  • You have the right to read and eat at the same time. (This right, however, does not include the right to use food as a bookmark when you are reading library books. Even if it’s the very best potato salad.)
  • You have the right to read and make love at the same time. (But– depending on local ordinances and regulations– you may or may not have the right to ask your librarian for suggested books.)
  • You have the right to read as many books as you want at the same time.
  • You have the right to throw any book on the floor and jump up and down on it (provided that you paid for it first).
  • You have the right to ignore the critics at the New York Review of Books.
  • More importantly, you have the right to ignore the critics in your immediate family.
  • You have the right to stop reading a book whenever you decide it’s not worth the effort, or that you simply don’t like it.
  • You have the right to refuse to read any book anyone else picks out for you. Even if it’s a birthday present. (This is associated with your right to refuse to wear any necktie or perfume you receive as a gift.)
  • You have the right to skip all the boring parts.
  • You have the right to read the last chapter first.
  • You have the right to read the last chapter first and then put the book back on the shelf.
  • You have the right to refuse to read any book where you don’t like the picture of the author. FINALLY, the Genre Reader’s Miranda Right:
  • If you do not have a genre book of your own, a genre book will be provided for you by your public library.

(–The Genre Reader’s Bill of Rights first came to my attention in library school, on the library listserv LM_NET. I printed it, cut it out, and posted it on my dorm room wall. I do not have the name or names of the person who shared it then. While I was not aware of it at the time, after we started the site, it came to my attention that it shares some elements with Daniel Pennac’s Reader’s Bill of Rights.) 

Posted on November 24, 2019 by , Reply
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