emmasinsight.com is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com.

The following is an essential reading list on epidemics. It contains excellent fictional takes from writers who, for centuries, have painted horrifying scenes of death and destruction wrought by plagues.

Many magnificent books try to predict the end of humankind as we know it.

They try to portrait in one way or another what could happen in an apocalyptic time. In danger, curiosity and paralyzing fear keep people’s imagination to wander and seek apocalyptic stories centered around a pandemic, especially now, with the eruption of the coronavirus. So, if you choose to stay safe in your own house, here is a coronavirus quarantine reading list to help you spend your time suitably.

We all read more news right now with our eyes wide open and jerky breathing as coronavirus spreads like wildfire across the globe. It seems that the world is trying to face an existential threat after another.

If you want a bit of peace, turn off the news and stay indoors with one or two books that make you feel good, safe, and informed. I have for you some recommendation to help you do that. But I also have some recommendations for those who seek something that thrills and excites them.

So here is your coronavirus quarantine reading list. Enjoy!

The Signature of All Things: A Novel by Elizabeth Gilbert (October 1, 2013)

Elizabeth Gilbert: The # 1 New York Times bestselling author of Eat Pray Love (August 13, 2010); Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear (September 22, 2015), and City of Girls: A Novel (June 4, 2019)

The Signature of All Things is an absorbing novel, an enthralling story of love, adventure, and discovery. It is about a woman scientist in the early 1800s who is heaps into moss.

This story takes us across the globe, introducing us unforgettable characters as missionaries, astronomers, abolitionists, adventurers, sea captains, geniuses, and the quite mad. But most memorable of all remains Alma Whittaker, a botanist. Alma Whittaker inherits from her father, Henry Whittaker, “the richest man in Philadelphia,” his fortune and his mind. Her research as a botanist takes her deeper into the mysteries of evolution.

As Alma has the benefit of wealth and books, she spends hours learning Latin and Greek and studying the natural world. Then, she falls in love with Ambrose Pike, a man who makes incomparable paintings of orchids. She channels her energy, not into marriage but into moss instead and what it can tell us about the evolution of man. Alma studies moss relentlessly for decades before sailing around the world to Tahiti, where the moss is even better.

Alma Whittaker is a woman in a man’s world. She’s a genius whose spirit is all about dedication, exploration, and the pursuit of truths, both expensive and personal.

Elizabeth Gilbert’s novel is meticulously researched who captures the worlds of botany. It’s a must-have.

The Plague by Albert Camus (1947)

The Plague is Albert Camus’s world-renowned fable of fear and courage; it is the bible of all novels about epidemics in the 20th century. It presents a town, Oran, grip of a deadly plague that condemns its victims to a swift and horrifying death.

As hysteria, fear, isolation, and claustrophobia begins to take place, the townspeople of Oranas are forced into quarantine; each of them tries to respond in their own way to the lethal disease. Some choose to resign themselves to fate; others to seek someone/something to blame, but very few to resist the terror.

Albert Camus’ s The Plague is, in part, an allegory of France’s suffering under the Nazi occupation.

It’s a story of bravery and determination against the precariousness of human existence that could be threatened anytime by all kinds of diseases. Please include it in your Coronavirus Quarantine Reading List immediately.

Albert Camus, born in Algeria in 1913, is a French Algerian philosopher, author, and journalist. His books include The Stranger (1942); The Plague (1947); The Fall (1956), and he won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1957.

The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work: A Practical Guide from the Country’s Foremost Relationship Expert by John Gottman (May 16, 2000) – Nonfiction Book

John Gottman’s The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work is a self-help book. It’s for those who seek to save or improve their marriage. From its publication, this book helped a lot of couples to strengthen their relationships. It showed them how to cherish their relationship more honestly; how to face problems like a divorce, or having the first child. Yes, having a child can be a very stressful time for a couple.

Some couples stop loving each other but stay together for the sake of their child/children. This book teaches them that this is not a good thing for anybody. You can all suffer from this, especially the child/children. You should not expose anyone to your fights, suffering or hatred.

A marriage needs to be nurtured and also filled with respect from both sides.

A good marriage is about excellent communication, understanding, and friendship. John Gottman’s The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work teaches all of us to honor and respect our life partner. Also, it tells what mistakes we should avoid not to end up in a divorce. (Maybe you’re wondering why I chose to include this book in my Coronavirus Quarantine Reading List. I did so because I wanted to have at least one nonfiction book with useful information.)

Pale Horse, Pale Rider: Three Short Novels: A Library of America eBook Classic by Katherine Anne Porter (January 1, 1939)

Pale Horse, Pale Rider is a classic 1939 collection of three short novels: Old Mortality, Noon Wine, and Pale Horse, Pale Rider. The last one is a mystical story of the narrow ledge between life and death. It is set around the Spanish flu pandemic in 1918. It focuses on a young woman who was a newspaper feature writer who fells in love with a soldier, an army lieutenant. When she falls ill with influenza, her husband cares for her until she is admitted to a hospital. She survives, but unfortunately, the husband gets sick too and dies.

All Katherine Anne Porter’s work is based on simplicity, beauty, and a sense of drama implicit in character and circumstance.

Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood (2003)

Fans of Margaret Atwood, here is a book recommendation only for you. Oryx and Crake is a novel so utterly compelling, remarkably prescient, so relevant because it describes a world devastated by the effects of genetic engineering, including a plague that has wiped out much of humanity. Thus, Margaret Atwood projects us into an outlandish yet wholly believable realm populated by unforgettable characters with a compelling vision of the future.

Oryx and Crake is a cautionary tale about the unexpected and terrible places technology could take us all.

Oryx and Crake shortlisted for the 2003 Man Booker Prize for Fiction; and also for the 2004 Orange Prize for Fiction received mostly favorable reviews in the press.

From all Margaret Atwood’s works, I liked best her latest novel, The Testaments, which is a sequel to The Handmaid’s Tale. The Testaments tell the story of Gilead’s fall and the end of patriarchy. It empowers women to fight for their own freedom. If you want to know more about The Testaments, here you’ll find its summary. But if you want even more, here is a list of most awesome quotes from it.

I hope that this coronavirus quarantine reading list will find you safe and also warm in your house. Take my advice, start reading all the books I listed here.