I finished Station Eleven yesterday, and will go ahead and reveal that I thought it was great. Some interesting echoes from our past reading list. I may not be able to make the next book club, though, because I'll have a hard time exiting my fortified basement and making my way past the water jugs and bags of rice to get to the front door, and then I won't want to tear through the caulk, duct tape, and plastic wrap to go outside.
Just to freak myself out further (and maybe to get a better grip on some of the related science issues) I've started David Quammen's Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic. It's about as frightening as you probably imagine. But Quammen's a fantastic writer, and I'm looking forward to finishing it. In case I haven't mentioned it eight or nine times already, he wrote one of my favorite books ever: The Song of the Dodo: Island Biogeography in an Age of Extinction. The history and future of evolution, extinction, islands, and more. Read it if you haven't.
Really, the question isn't whether you're going to survive the pandemic, it's whether you're going to survive the post-pandemic. Judging from the book, you probably want to add whiskey, archery supplies, and painkillers to that rice collection.
ReplyDeleteAlso too, Quammen is a gem.