Have we been here before?

[Greensleeves]

Romilly - I've recently read 'The Machine Stops' and yes that's another interesting book.  Very impressive how EM Forster foresaw the internet and instant messaging etc; chilling stuff.  I like the sound of 'Inferno'.  I'll put that on my list after 'Contagion'. 

Not on the same theme but certainly dystopian is 'Snowpiercer' which is currently showing on Netflix.  Best and most exciting series I've watched for a long time. Incidentally I'm interleaving the watching and reading of all this grim stuff with binge-watching Downton Abbey which certainly brings some light relief both to my viewing and to life in general!   

[youngtug]

The Unparalleled Invasion by Jack London. Published in 1910.

[Romilly]

Thanks for the pointers Greensleeves:-)

Inferno is I think, one of the trilogy of Dan Brown films? The first one was the Da Vinci Code, - I can’t remember the middle one!

We’ve just finished watching all 3 series of ‘Broadchurch’, - I feel lost now!

Romilly.

[roopat]

La Peste by Albert Camus

[Gadget]

I'd totally forgotten about that one - it was on a reading list I was given  in the 1960s - a distant pre-plague past

 
PS - I've just looked and see that I've  still got it after all this time

[Top-of-the-hill]

  I never have any trouble reading, though a lot of it has been fairly light fiction. I have mixed in any non-fiction I have in the house. But housework and cleaning the oven ( ) are as far down the list as they always have been.
  I have just got hold of and re-read a book, which is mainly about the development of kitchen gadgets, but the author also had a theory about housework. When servants became hard to find, the middle class women became servants themselves, partly because all sorts of things were being invented which pushed her that way. The work should have been outsourced. The book was written in the late 80s, and now a lot of outsourcing is in fact happening.

[Greensleeves]

Just finished watching the film 'Contagion' (2011), and the parallels with the current pandemic are astonishing.  China, bat virus transferring to pigs, then to humans via meat processing... The outbreak, the realisation that the virus could remain active on surfaces for long periods of time, and the frantic search for a vaccine.

The film didn't foresee people claiming that the virus was a hoax, or burning down 5G masts, or refusing to wear masks, but on the whole the current situation was pretty well, and chillingly, mirrored.

[pharmaT]

I’m re-reading “World Without End” by Ken Follett and have just reached the part when the plague has arrived at the town of Kingsbridge. One of the main characters has returned from Florence after surviving “ La Moria grande.”  He is telling, Caris, a nun who works in the hospital , what the Italians did.

 " In Florence the nuns counselled us to stay at home as much as possible and avoid social gatherings, markets and meetings of guilds and councils. The nuns wore linen masks over their mouths and noses and washed their hands in vinegar after touching the patients.”  Sound familiar?

Have you read any fiction or non fiction that could almost describe how we have dealt with Covid 19?

I read a book that discussed a smallpox outbreak, I think it was in Quebec.  One Bishop advised his parishoners to gather together and pray or an end of it and held more frequent communion services.  The other advised order the use of the common cup to be stopped temporarily, and advised his flock to stay at home and pray with their families to protect everyone by being apart.  Can't remember the book though.

[ThrelfallYorky]

The Camus thing is on Radio 4 Britain Sunday afternoon. Performed by actors in lockdown?