This guest blog has been kindly contributed by our reviewer and former colleague, the brilliant Alice Nuttall. You can see Alice's recent reviews here or check out her writing on her website.
If you’re furloughed or working from home, you’ve probably got a bit more time on your hands than usual to catch up on your reading. (If you’re an essential worker, thank you for everything you’re doing, and hopefully you have a few spare moments on your commute!) I’ve been using my extra hours in the house to work my way through the mountains of books on my ‘To Be Read’ pile. Some of them have provided exciting escapism or necessary distractions, while others have hit a bit too close to home, but offered a new and interesting perspective on living through a pandemic. Here are my top quarantine reads.
A Blade So Black by LL McKinney
I love an Alice in Wonderland retelling, and with the tagline “What if Buffy fell down the rabbithole instead of Alice?”, I was instantly curious(er and curiouser). Alice, a teenager living in modern-day Atlanta, stumbles across Wonderland one day, and ends up fighting monsters and defending the world while also dealing with homework, romance, and a no-nonsense mum. I loved spotting familiar characters in different guises, and following the adventures of this new Alice. In a scary and confusing time, a fantastical adventure about killing monsters is an excellent distraction.
High Rise Mystery by Sharna Jackson
It’s shaping up to be a very sunny spring, so High Rise Mystery, set in a London tower block in the height of a scorching summer, felt like the right story to read. Sisters Nik and Norva are on their school holidays, but homework and hanging out is pushed to the side when they discover a body at the bottom of a rubbish chute, and have to find the murderer before they can strike again. I’ve always found murder mysteries to be oddly comforting reads, and High Rise Mystery is a great choice for readers young and old.
Station Eleven by Emily St John Mandel
I started reading this one at the beginning of lockdown, and slightly regretted it at first. Station Eleven, moving backwards and forwards in time, slowly builds up a picture of a world devastated by an unexpected, lightning-fast pandemic that leads to total societal collapse, with the world only beginning to regain some semblance of order twenty years later. Yeah. Don’t shelve it too fast, though – it’s also a beautifully-crafted, compelling story about hope, resilience and survival. It also made me feel a little more reassured that, despite having no practical skills at all, I might still fit into a post-apocalyptic world, so that was comforting.
The Adventure Zone: Here There Be Gerblins by the McElroys and Carey Pietsch
For pure escapism that will also give you a good laugh, you can’t go wrong with the first The Adventure Zone graphic novel. A comic book adaptation of the long-running podcast, the story follows three hapless adventurers as they try to recover dangerous magical artefacts, mess up their spells, and generally cause chaos.
If you fancy reading any of these, or your bookshelves are looking a bit bare, many bookshops are doing online ordering and delivery. Blackwell’s is still open online, and your local independent bookshop is just an email or a phone call away. Alternatively, you can buy your books via Hive, which gives a cut of their profits to independent bookshops (so, Amazon without the deep undercurrent of general evil). Lots of book groups have moved online as well – browse through Daily Info’s virtual listings for details of bookish Zoom and Skype meetings. Happy reading!