Steering into the skid: Books for the End of the World.
Thu Oct 20, 2005 at 07:58:26 AM PDT
Preface:
It is the day after the 2004 election. I am devastated, and angry and afraid. I want to move to Canada. I go to my mother's house during lunch and weep on her shoulder, like I haven't done since I was a child. Depression sweeps over me. I need to do something to counteract it. I will read friendly, spiritual books from my childhood like "A Wrinkle in Time" and Narnia. I will listen to John Denver and only watch funny things on TV. No more Law and Order SVU for me.
I doesn't work.
more
Several days later, still depressed and scared, I am at the library I work at and a question comes up about something, that in my research leads to something, which leads to Patty Hearst. Well, I never really knew much about that story, so I look it up on a grizzly but very well documented website dedicated to serial killers and psychopaths and read the Patty Hearst story. I am glued to the website throughout the rest of the day. Between reference questions and regular work stuff I go back and I read all about the Manson family, and Ed Gein, and John Wayne Gacy, and after all of this obsessive, morbid, horrified reading, at the end of the day I feel . . . better.
WTF?
How can reading about the Manson Family make me feel better when listening to John Denver makes me cry?
What kind of warped person am I?
Then it hits me. I am struggling against my negative emotions. I am fighting them instead of letting them play out. Reading about evil and horror had allowed some of those emotions to release themselves. I had steered into the proverbial car skid instead of away from it.
So, when all these diaries starting popping up about our Collective Fears and the collapse of society via the economy or natural disaster or a government orchestrated terror attack or gas running out, or bird flu, or "Winter is Coming" I found myself picking up "Gone With the Wind," and reading (for the umpteenth time) about the spoiled, pampered Scarlett O'Hara reduced to utter poverty by a war that destroys everything she had, and how she survives by sheer determination, ruthlessness, and a total lack of scruples. And yes, it has made me feel better. (Which is probably why I kept reading it over and over in college: it was a reaction to my fears about facing my post-degree future as an adult.)
And so, for my First Official Diary I would like to offer the following:
It's the End of the World as We Know It Reading List
The Criteria for the List:
The books have to be fiction.
They have to be about ordinary people. No James Bonds, no Bourne Identity, no Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
They have to be about survival after war, natural disaster, shipwreck, plane wreck or a societal collapse.
Ideally the characters will be coping without any survival tools. They are not soldiers, or farmers, or woodsmen, or Ninjas, or MI5 agents, or Linda Hamilton in Terminator 2.
The stories can be historical, futuristic, or present day. They can be sci-fi as long as they are still about Planet Earth.
Historical Fiction:
Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
The Civil War and Reconstruction in Georgia.
The Birthday Boys by Beryl Bainbridge
Captian Scott's doomed Antarctic expedition in 1912
A Prayer for the Dying by Stewart O'Nan
Post-Civil War diphtheria epidemic in a small town
The Lost Mother by Mary McGarry Morris
Homeless children live in a tent in the woods of Vermont during the Great Depression
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
The Dust Bowl.
Aftershocks by Richard Wheeler
San Fancisco Earthquake of 1906
Futuristic/Sci Fi:
The Stand by Stephen King
Superflu pandemic wipes out most of the population of earth. Then things get really scary.
Lucifer's Hammer by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle
Gigantic comet hits the earth. Total collapse of all civilization.
The Rift by Walter J Williams
New Madrid, Missouri suffers an 8.9 earthquake.
The Third Pandemic by Pierre Ouellette
Deadly virus sweeps from Africa to the rest of the world.
Current Day, Near Future, and/or Allegorical
John Dollar by Marianne Wiggins
Community of British schoolgirls in Burma falls prey to disaster when an earthquake and tidal wave sweep them off a ship anchored near an island.
Lord of the Flies by William Golding
Group of British schoolboys is stranded on a deserted island during a global war. (IMHO one of the finest, most beautiful, and most haunting, tragic, horrifying, disturbing and gorgeous novels ever written.)
Into the Forest by Jean Hegland
Two sisters try to survive in a world in which they find themselves suddenly and inexplicably without electricity, water, or communication, and civil order has broken apart.
The Cage by Audrey Schulman
Near Churchill, Manitoba, a nature photographer's expedition goes disastrously wrong.
Disclaimer: I have NOT read all the books on this list and cannot vouch for them all personally. These were recommendations from co-workers and some library web sites which I cross-referenced at Amazon to make sure they fit my criteria and had decent reviews. So if you read one and it sucks, its not my fault.
ENJOY!
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