Kaiser Wilhelm of Germany abdicated on 9 November 1918 and in the streets of Paris there was jubilation. One of the reasons I decided to pick up Pale Rider: The Spanish Flu of 1918 and How It Changed the World at this point in history, was for the history. We are now 18 months into … Continue reading Pale Rider | Laura Spinney
What a mad, mad ride Laura Jean McKay takes you on in The Animals in That Country! During the past week McKay won the Victorian Premier's Literary Award for fiction. That was enough for me to rat through my TBR piles looking for the ARC I knew I had tucked away somewhere. In this year … Continue reading The Animals in That Country | Laura Jean McKay #AWW
I started this post on the 27th January to commemorate/commiserate the one year anniversary of the first confirmed Covid-19 case in Australia. But these posts always take me longer to write than I think they will. The last Covid Chronicles was in mid December, just as the Northern Beaches cluster was starting. Over the Christmas/NY … Continue reading The Covid Chronicles #10
The very first thing I want to know is how does Emily pronounce her middle name? Does she say it as it looks, 'saint john', or does she use the English pronunciation 'sinjin'? I have no idea, or any good reason, why it has taken me so long to get around to reading this terrific … Continue reading Station Eleven | Emily St. John Mandel #PlagueLit
I had no idea that Bill Hayes was working on another scenes of New York book that would focus on the March-April Covid-19 lockdown of 2020. If I'd known, I may have experienced fewer angsty days of my own, knowing that Bill was going to somehow make it all right! It’s a little like losing … Continue reading How We Live Now: Scenes from the Pandemic | Bill Hayes #USANonFiction
I cannot believe the last time I sat down to write a Covid Chronicle was back in July. Melbourne was at the beginning of it's second wave, while the rest of the country held it's collective breath. Would the outbreak spread? Would we all have to go into another lockdown? Numbers steadily increased around the … Continue reading The Covid Chronicles #9
This slim volume of essays grabbed my attention thanks to it's Covid-related lockdown content. Lately, I've been reading a number of fiction titles about plagues and epidemics (see below). This was the first one, however, that considered our current Covid situation. I've been meaning to read something by Zadie Smith, ever since 2000 and White Teeth, … Continue reading Intimations: Six Essays | Zadie Smith #USANonFiction
For the first half of this year, I was avoiding plague literature, like the plague! But since reading Camus' The Plague during August, I seem to be verging on obsession. What are the signs, I hear you ask? First up, how many people do you know, who take plague literature with them on a holiday … Continue reading A Journal of the Plague Year | Daniel Defoe #UKclassic
After reading a number of slow, reflective reads lately, I needed something a bit easier and faster. The Pull of the Stars fit the bill nicely. It was easy to read, even with the rather detailed 1918 midwifery and autopsy scenes that left me gasping and wincing in sympathy! In keeping with my current Plague … Continue reading The Pull of the Stars | Emma Donoghue #HistoricalFiction
Nearly two months ago, I wrote my last Covid Chronicles #7. In Australia, our curve had flattened, lockdown conditions had been lifted and our only new cases of coronavirus came from international travellers. All these travellers went into a mandatory 2-week government-controlled quarantine in various hotels around Sydney and Melbourne, before being allowed back out into … Continue reading The Covid Chronicles #8
I recently read an interview with Ann Patchett where see was asked about how hard it was to scrap a piece of writing that wasn't working, and to start again. The interviewer thought it might be like a little death to let go a hard-won piece of writing, but Patchett was more pragmatic. Her reply … Continue reading The End of the World is Bigger than Love | Davina Bell #AWW
It feels like this may be my last Covid Chronicles for the time being.NSW has just clocked over 10 days of no new community transmission cases of Covid-19. Restrictions have eased. gradually but dramatically over the past few weeks, and life is almost back as it was. Except for the containers of hand sanitiser at … Continue reading The Covid Chronicles #7
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