Five "Essential" Stories to Get You Through the Pandemic
Today’s post is not a musing—It’s a less deep, quick, fun list of recommendations.
Even though some states are opening back up and starting to ease on restrictions, the COVID-19 pandemic is still at the front of most everyone’s minds. Many of us are still working from home and coping with the reality of social distance.
And some people are just bored. So, here are some recommendations to make you less bored.
Five “Essential” Stories to Get You Through the Pandemic
What better way to escape and cope with a global crisis than through the soothing power of story? Whether you’re reading or watching movies or tv shows, stories can help us process what we’re feeling, and they can make any unfortunate situation more bearable.
Keeping in mind both the pandemic and the widespread shelter-in-place orders (and other varying “quarantine” levels in different countries, states, and cities), all of these stories feature elements relatable to our current global situation.
So if you’re looking for a story to hold you over through the uncertainty, here are my recommendations…
Five — 10 Cloverfield Lane
10 Cloverfield Lane is a feel-good movie about a woman who gets in a car wreck and wakes up in an underground bunker with her “rescuer”—an extra creepy John Goodman. Supposedly, he saved her, and the outside is dangerous and uninhabitable, but can she trust him?
Okay, maybe “feel-good” is the wrong descriptor. But this intense, edge-of-your-seat thriller is the perfect way to feel better about your own quarantine situation.
Four — A Quiet Place
Nothing says “Shelter-in-Place” like John Krasinski’s film about a family surviving a post-apocalyptic world where monsters roam the earth—monsters that hunt humans using their super-sensitive hearing, and almost any noise you make could spell your doom.
It’ll make you want to hold your breath—and your family. And, a nice bonus: It’s guaranteed to make you a better listener.
Three — Black, Red, and White (The Circle Trilogy)
Ted Dekker’s action-packed Circle Series (initially a trilogy consisting of Black, Red, and White) tell the story of Thomas Hunter, a man who travels between worlds. In our world, he’s trying to stop a deadly virus from spreading out of control and killing everyone. On Other Earth, he’s experiencing a vivid fantasy world filled with colorful trees, creepy black bats, fluffy white bats, an itchy skin condition, and a soothing pool of God’s love—a pool worth drowning in.
If you’ve never dived into Dekker’s fantasy masterpiece before, now’s the perfect time to make the plunge.
(Disclaimer: The series was expanded with a sequel/prequel called Green. DON’T READ IT FIRST. It’s labeled “book zero” but it’s really book four. It is both four and zero because it completes the circle. You can read starting with Green and then going into Black, but doing so would spoil most of the biggest details of the original trilogy was well as some details of Dekker’s other books in the stories’ shared universe. Green is good, but only after you also read the Paradise Trilogy and the Lost Books YA series.)
Two — The Line Between / A Single Light
For a more modern thriller experience related to pandemics, look no further than Tosca Lee’s stellar 2019 duology that starts with The Line Between and ends with A Single Light.
The story follows a cult survivor after she’s been excommunicated from the community. just as she’s beginning to readjust to the real world, a disease begins spreading around the world. It’s an ancient virus freed from melted permafrost—and the virus appears to have connections to our heroine’s former cult.
I won’t give it away, but one of the books also has a crazy-intense quarantine subplot that turned out to be both more realistic and relatable than I originally realized.
One — Elantris
Elantris is my new favorite book. Though it was initially released in 2004, I only read it earlier this year—and as I did, I had no clue the timing would be so good.
Elantris is the fantasy debut novel from modern superstar author Brandon Sanderson. It’s a medieval fantasy novel with fun, relatable characters, creative world-building, and a quarantine city.
Ten years after a city of magic and god-like super-humans experiences an inexplicable curse which turns these “gods” into zombies, the kingdom’s capitol is now a quarantine city, and one night, the prince gets the disease.
While the prince tries to navigate the mysterious city and uncover the curse’s mystery, a newly widowed princess (engaged to the diseased prince who’s believed-dead) goes head to head with a creepy high priest from a neighboring kingdom—an empire preparing for world domination.
The way Sanderson weaves the stories of these three characters together is an incredible joy to experience.
What did I miss?
These are my recommendations! What books or movies did I miss? Are you still in quarantine, or are my suggestions too late for your city/state/country?
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