Books in the Time of a Pandemic. Suggestions for Reading During the Coronavirus Self-Quarantine

A few days ago I tweeted (https://twitter.com/PeterGleick/status/1238276790335889408)

“In the spirit of getting thru social distancing and self-quarantines, I suggest we recommend books to each other & then order them (locally if possible) & support our authors. Here are a couple I loved:

A Man Called Ove (Fredrik Backman) The Dreamt Land (Mark Arax).

Your turn!

I got a wonderful response with over 100 replies, and nearly 170 recommendations. I’ve decided to compile them here, in no particular order, so that you can find recommendations for books and authors other people thought were worth reading. Yes, there seems to be several related to pandemics, sci-fi disasters, and so on, but hey, that’s a sign of the times. Plenty of classics. A great diversity of topics, categories, and authors. Thanks all, for the suggestions.

And I repeat, order them from your local bookstore. They need the support!

Per my wonderful editor-in-chief sister, here are links to local booksellers:

indiebound.com

and

bookshop.org

• A Man Called Ove (Fredrik Backman)
• The Dreamt Land (Mark Arax)
• Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind (Yuval Harari)
• The Wayward Bus (John Steinbeck)
• Falter (Bill McKibben)
• The Invention of Nature (Andrea Wulf)
• Wisdom of the Elders (David Suzuki and Peter Knudtson)
• The Power of Moments (Chip and Dan Heath)
• The Human Planet (Mark Maslin and Simon Lewis)
• A Gentleman in Moscow (Amor Towles)
• Mistakes Were Made But Not By Me (Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson)
• Wanderers (Chuck Wendig)
• The Imperial Radch Trilogy (Ann Leckie)
• Provenance (Ann Leckie)
• The Three-Body Problem Trilogy (Liu Cixin)
• The Overstory (Richard Powers)
• All the Light We Cannot See (Anthony Doerr)
• Grant (Ron Chernow)
• The Story of More (Hope Jahren)
• White Noise (Don Delillo)
• The Savage Detectives (Roberto Bolaño)
• Lincoln in the Bardo (George Saunders)
• The West Without Water: What Past Floods, Droughts, and Other Climatic Clues Tell Us About Tomorrow (B. Lynn Ingram and Frances Malamud-Roam)
• The Way Between (Rivera Sun)
• The Firsts (Jennifer Steinhauer)
• The Mountains Sing (Nguyen Phan Que Mai)
• Why Trust Science (Naomi Oreskes)
• Sea of Poppies (Amitav Ghosh)
• Ibis Trilogy (Amitav Ghosh)
• 1000 Years of Solitude (Gabriel García Márquez)
• The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark (Carl Sagan)
• The First Scientist: Anaximander and His Legacy (Carlo Rovelli)
• Sing, Unburied, Sing (Jesmyn Ward)
• Say Nothing (Patrick Radden Keefe)
• Salvage the Bones (Jesmyn Ward)
• Jet Stream (Tim Woollings)
• The Gone Away World (Nick Harkaway)
• The Roo (Alan Baxter)
• Cranky Uncle vs Climate Change (John Cook)
• Letters of Note: Correspondence Deserving of a Wider Audience (Shaun Usher)
• Persepolis (Marjane Satrapi)
• The Left Hand of Darkness (Ursula Le Guin)
• Good Omens (Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman)
• On the Road (Jack Kerouac)
• James and the Giant Peach (Roald Dahl)
• Becoming (Michelle Obama)
• Death Need Not Be Fatal (Malachy McCourt)
• Lab Girl (Hope Jahren)
• The Plague (Albert Camus)
• My Year of Rest and Relaxation (Ottessa Moshfegh)
• How to Change Your Mind (Michael Pollan)
• The Water Dancer (Ta-Nehisi Coates)
• Meditations in Green (Stephen Wright)
• Blood Meridian or The Evening Redness in the West (Cormac McCarthy)
• Sympathy for the Devil (Kent Anderson)
• Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (Robert M. Pirsig)
• Tightrope: Americans Reaching for Hope (Nicholas D. Kristof)
• The Red Trilogy (Linda Nagata)
• Educated (Tara Westover)
• Red Notice: A True Story of High Finance, Murder, and One Man's Fight for Justice (Bill Browder)
• Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup (John Carreyrou)
• Little Fires Everywhere (Celeste Ng)
• Dreamland: The True Tale of America's Opiate Epidemic (Sam Quinones)
• Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike (Phil Knight)
• Blowout (Rachel Maddow)
• Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood (Trevor Noah)
• Whiskey Master Class (Lew Bryson)
• Overstory (Richard Powers)
• Underland (Robert MacFarlane)
• The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History (Elizabeth Kolbert)
• The Legend of Broken (Caleb Carr)
• ("Anything by Mercedes Lackey")
• ("Anything by Neil deGrasse Tyson")
• Occupation Trilogy (Patrick Modiano)
• Children of the Land (Marcelo Hernandez Castillo)
• ("Any Ian Fleming")
• Red Notice (Bill Browder)
• Kochland: The Secret History of Koch Industries and Corporate Power in America (Christopher Leonard)
• A History of Life in 100 Fossils (Paul D. Taylor and Aaron O'Dea)
• Terra Ignota (Ada Palmer)
• The Cellist of Sarajevo (Steven Galloway)
• The Dream of Scipio (Iain Pears)
• New Human Rights Movement (Peter Joseph)
• Girl of the Limberlost (Gene Stratton Porter)
• Freckles (Gene Stratton Porter)
• Edible Forest Gardens (Dave Jacke and Eric Toensmeier)
• Infinite Jest (David Foster Wallace)
• On the Yard (Malcolm Braley)
• A Place For Us (Fatima Farheen Mirza)
• Boy At the Gate (Danny Ellis)
• The Dutch House (Ann Patchett)
• Horizon (Barry Lopez)
• Mansfield Park (Jane Austin)
• The Clan Of The Cavebear (Jean M. Auel)
• The Collected Short Stories of Irwin Shaw
• Night Boat to Tangier (Kevin Barry)
• Dear Committee Members (Julie Schumacher)
• How to be an Antiracist (Ibram X. Kendi)
• An Intimate History of Humanity (Theordore Zeldin)
• The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History (John Barry)
• Ego is the Enemy (Ryan Holiday)
• Dark Emu (Bruce Pascoe)
• Descent (Tim Johnston)
• The Coming Plague (Laurie Garrett)
• Invisible Romans (Robert Knapp)
• The Thing with Feathers: The Surprising Lives of Birds (Noah Strycker)
• Our Towns (James and Deborah Fallows)
• The Murmur of Bees (Sofia Segovia)
• The Years of Rice and Salt (Kim Stanley Robinson)
• Spinning Silver (Naomi Novik)
• The Storyteller's Secret (Sejal Badani)
• The Outlander Series (Diana Gabaldon)
• The History of Bees (Maja Lunde)
• The Xenogenisis Trilogy (Octavia Butler)
• The Scratch of a Pen: 1763 and the Transformation of North America (Colin G. Calloway)
• The Mote in God's Eye (Larry Niven) 
• Hyperion (Dan Simmons)
• The Lost Fleet series (Jack Campbell)
• The Expanse series (James S. A. Corey)
• Complications (Atul Gawande)
• Death in Venice (Thomas Mann)
• War with the Newts (Karel Čapek)
• An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth (Chris Hadfield)
• Winter’s Tale (Mark Helprin)
• Where the Crawdads Sing (Delia Owens)
• Burning Souls (David Chernushenko)
• Time Reborn: From the Crisis in Physics to the Future of the Universe (Lee Smolin)
• The Revolution Trilogy (Rick Atkinson)
• Liberation Trilogy (Rick Atkinson)
• Love in the Time of Cholera (Gabriel García Márquez)
• The Death of Expertise (Tom Nichols)
• The Lightest Object in the Universe (Kimi Eisele)
• My Brilliant Friend (Elena Ferrante)
• Rendezvous with Rama (Arthur C. Clarke)
• How Green Was My Valley (Richard Llewellyn)
• Trinity (Leon Uris)
• One Summer, 1927 (Bill Bryson)
• Brooklyn Bridge (David McCullough)
• Housekeeping (Marilynne Robinson)
• The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse (Louise Erdrich)
• "Anything by Wendell Berry"
• "Anything by Michael Crummey"
• Children of Ruin (Adrian Tchaikovsky)
• The Myth of Human Supremacy (Derric Jensen)
• Beartown (Fredrik Backman)
• The Animators (Kayla Rae Whitaker)
• On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous (Ocean Vuong)
• Nothing to See Here (Kevin Wilson)
• The Maine Clambake Mysteries (Barbara Ross)
• Dark Matter (Blake Crouch)
• Red Rising (Pierce Brown)
• Radium Girls (Kate Moore)
• The Ship of Dreams (Gareth Russell)
• American Overdose (Chris McGreal)
• Wunderland (Jennifer Cody)
• Those Who Knew (Idra Novey)
• Heartland: A Memoir of Working Hard and Being Broke in the Richest Country on Earth (Sarah Smarsh)
• Mrs. Dalloway (Virginia Woolf)
• "Anything by Nathaniel Philbrick"
• Cadillac Desert (Marc Reisner)
• The Hot Zone (Richard Preston)
• The Book Thief (Markus Zusak)
• The Harry Potter books (J. K. Rowling)
• The Lord of the Ring books (Tolkien)
• Bridge of Clay (Markus Zusak)
• The Violinist's Thumb (Sam Kean)
• Every Body Has a Story (Beverly Gologorsky)
• The Bastard Brigade: The True Story of the Renegade Scientists and Spies Who Sabotaged the Nazi Atomic Bomb (Sam Kean)
• The Dinosaur Artist (Paige Williams)
• "Anything by Polly Horvath"