Books and films to read and watch while self-isolating

Films. Cabin Fever. 28 Days Later. The Thing.

Books. White Noise. Cosmopolis. Mao II.

I recently saw one of the big YouTubers say he doesn't even play video games for fun anymore and that he's much more into boardgames. It's definitely a thing.

One of my mates used to always try to get everyone to play Escape from Atlantis when we were pissed but we never did.

28 days later - the title is just too close to home right now. Rec is another good one

I am Legend is entertaining

"We were like a married couple unable anymore to speak the truth about the most important things. I had never lied to Melissa about anything except the conviction that she would pull through the flu. She knew it was a lie and did not hold it against me. She was too sick anyway to worry about whether she might survive. She had dysentery-like nausea and diarrhea and her lungs were filling up like pneumonia which was terrifying. In the end she just wanted it to be over. Pillow, she whispered to me. Her eyes were glassy and unfocused, her hair wet with sweat, her hand terribly light, almost desiccated on mine. And cold. Pillow. I’d been crying. I tried with every ounce not to, not to weep as I saw my world, everything in it of any importance, vanishing from my grip. In almost a panic, I can say now, I adjusted her one pillow behind her head on the cot, not sure what she wanted adjusted, so that it bunched a little and raised her head.

No, she breathed. Barely breathed. Her hand scratched the back of mine like a claw, like she was trying to grasp it and couldn’t.

Use it.

I stared at her.

Hig. Two, three breaths short, unable to get enough oxygen. Please.

Her eyes glassy, still blue gray, I always thought like a clear sea on a cloudy day, now deepening in color, struggling to focus on mine.

Please.

Please.

I looked around the hall filled with cots for a doctor or orderly, in some desperate hope to forestall, but they were almost all sick anyway, or starting to throw up and cough, this was like some ring of hell, there was no one. A stench, the clamor of coughing and sickness.

Her hand scratched at mine her eyes would not leave my face.

I gently lifted the back of her head off the pillow and laid it back down on the stained sheet and brought the pillow around and said I love you. More than anything in God’s universe. And her eyes were on mine and she didn’t say a word and I covered her face and used it. On my own wife.

She heaved twice, struggled, clawed lightly, went still. The clamor in the hall did not stop the moans and coughing. Did not stop.

I loved her.

This is what I live with.
I lift my head off the pillow
I see the frosted moon.
I lower it down I think of home.”

Seems like Ballard would be resonant at this time.

I just remembered that DeLillo's white noise is about some sort of airborne toxic event. (Maybe only laterally though.)

I have been reading Eliot's "Four Quartets" (written during the second world war and the blitz) and I keep thinking that "the eye in the door" might be a good one to read to tap into that sense of uncertainty. Thank fuck bombs aren't being dropped on us!

Really though atm I want escapism. Earthsea was doing the job nicely the other day.

I wrote an earthsea poem over Christmas I should force you to read it

That's funny I don't know if I would have expected you to like it. Seems a bit pompous for your tastes maybe? And too deliberately anachronistic, ala Blood Meridian.

As for me I pretty much loved the first one, despite it being humourless and pompous. Brilliantly written, absolutely shits on yer Harry Potter and even His Dark Materials.

I reread the trilogy while I was round my mums over Christmas

Sparrowhawk. Loved it.

I need to read the next one. Got a lot of time to do that now at least.

It's Skyrim-y I suppose. And you like game of gnomes, of course.

What about lord of the rings? (Love the film's, can't stand the books).

Well after I finished all the earthsea books (except the '90s one which I don't like) I read LOTR for the first time. I sort of enjoyed it but Earthsea is much better. I was feeling under heavy psychic attack and needed comforting hence the children's lit