What better way to spend the isolated and social distanced hours in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic reading about other pandemics, fictional or otherwise? Here are three books to add to your quarantine reading list.

First, Severance by Ling Ma, a fiction novel. The book follows Candace, who remains healthy as society screeches to a following the Shen Fever. She relies heavily on routine, even when the world is seemingly falling apart, until she has to break her routine and form new ones following a quick descent into a post-apocalyptic lifestyle.

Second, a nonfiction book: The Coming Plague: Newly Emerging Diseases in a World Out of Balance

by Laurie Garrett. As she states in the title, the book details exactly what new diseases we may face in the future, and as a book published in 1995, she’s not very far off the mark. Like the title, however, the book is long (750 pages!) and is definitely more of an academic read than a leisure read.

Finally, Year of Wonders: A Novel of the Plague is a historical fiction novel by Geraldine Brooks. Set in a quarantined village in 1666, the book is written from the perspective of housemaid Anna, who lives through the paranoia and grief that flood through her village in the wake of many villagers dying of a plague (and finds romance as she does). 

There’s no better time to get back into reading than the long weeks ahead, and there’s no better way to start than with books that are somewhat relatable, if not entertaining.