It's the Apocalypse!: Suggested Reading

While no, it is not really the apocalypse, that was the general consensus when the Great Plague was ravaging London in 1665, so I've collected some appropriate songs, movies, and books for you to check out (potentially at your local library) in the spirit of such an existential panic. I've gleaned some of the selections from NC Stage staff, but others come from lists and collections found on the world wide web.  I'll be sharing them on the blog over the course of the run of One Flea Spare with a focus on books today... and one video, too.  Enjoy!

To kick things off, a quintessential apocalyptic song (in video form): R.E.M.'s "It's the End of the World (As We Know It)." For a fun nugget of trivia, here's an article about the boy in the video.

 

So, to books!  First, a shout-out and thank-you to our neighbors and collaborators, Malaprop's Bookstore, for being our script purveyor this season and also for a One Flea Spare-focused display up at the store as well as in our lobby.  

Check out lobby display next to the box office!

We've got a collection of Naomi Wallace's plays entitled In the Heart of America and Other Plays that includes One Flea Spare, so if you find yourself drawn in by Ms. Wallace's writing, this is a book you'll want to pick up.

We also have Daniel Defoe's A Journal of the Plague Year. Although a fictional account of the Great Plague in 1665 London, "Many critics over the years have judged it to be a more inciteful account of the awful events of 1665 than the eyewitness account written by Samuel Pepys."

Our book selection doesn't focus solely around the bubonic plague, the 1660s, and England, though. We have two books about more recent 'plagues' in the United States.  

POX: An American History by Michael Willrich "offers a gripping chronicle of how the nation's continentwide fight against smallpox launched one of the most important civil liberties struggles of the twentieth century.  At the dawn of the activist Progressive era and during a moment of great optimism about modern medicine, the government responded to the deadly epidemic by calling for universal compulsory vaccination." Recently featured on NPR!

The other 'plague' book set in America is My Own Country: A Doctor's Story by Abraham Verghese.  This true story took place not far from Asheville -- Johnson City, Tennessee -- and tells how the small town grapples with AIDS in the 1980s and how Dr. Verghese, an infectious disease specialist, by necessity becomes the AIDS expert. This book, according to wikipedia, "is used in colleges and medical schools throughout North America and across the world because of the way it communicates the sense of empathy and compassion so often missing in medical school education in an era of high technology and reliance on computers as primary diagnostic tools." 

So how 'bout some others?  

"Surely there are lots more than those they're selling in the lobby," you're thinking.  Well, you're right!  Congratulations.  

Read on for more suggestions...

- The Road by Cormac McCarthy -- Set after some unnamed disaster, a father and son journey through a post-apocalyptic landscape.  Don't know much else than that since I haven't read it myself, but one of my college roommates loved the book, and I recently picked up the book on CD version from the library, so I'm psyched to listen. It also won the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, so obviously, it's quality stuff.

- Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies by Jared Diamond -- A non-fiction book that's been on my list for a while now (still haven't acquired it yet), Bill Gates says of Guns, Germs, and Steel, "Fascinating... Lays a foundation for understanding human history." While not necessarily apocalyptic, from what I understand, it gives some insight into why certain societies are no longer around today. You know, evolutionary biology.

- World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War by Max Brooks -- For those who take the more horror/sci-fi perspective to the apocalypse, this one's for you. "The end was near. Zombies were taking over. They were infiltrating every corner the world. No neutral ground existed, no nation was secure, and we were in serious danger of becoming extinct - overrun by hordes of the living dead."

- Year of Wonders: A Novel of the Plague by Geraldine Brooks -- Recommended by our props mistress, Jessica, this novel is set during the same time as the play (1660s), but in a rural setting.  From a blurb: "Cocooned from the outside world and ravaged by the disease, [the village's] inhabitants struggle to retain their humanity in the face of the disaster. The narrator, the young widow Anna Frith, is one of the few who succeeds."

Still want more? Here's a link to a long list of suggested 'Apocalypse Books'.

Do you have some favorites or other recommendations? Please share!