Today is the thirtieth and final day of the 30-day book challenge, in which I have been writing about a different book or book series every day for 30 days, with each book chosen according to the daily prompt. Today's prompt is: "your favourite book of all time".
We did it. We've made it to the final "day" of the 30-day book challenge, which thankfully was not unambiguously called the "one-month book challenge"; if it had been, that might have prevented me from shamelessly dragging out these 30 days over the course of several months, only posting if and when I felt like it. But that is indeed what I did, and while you can say what you like about my lack of commitment to the exact goal of the challenge (to write a post every day consecutively), I'm still very happy with the result that I did eventually complete the challenge in some form, and I now have 30 more posts here on this blog than I did previously.
So, in this final post, to celebrate the fact that I got here in large part due to interpreting the general challenge in a way that was most convenient for me, I am also going to cheat on today's prompt.
I don't really have one specific favourite book. What's more, most of the books I would consider naming or would place in my Top 10 Favourite Books, I have already mentioned in other posts throughout this challenge. So in the interest of not repeating myself or forcing myself to pick one book when I really don't want to, I'm going to use this post to talk about my favourite book that I've read recently: Severance by Ling Ma.
Severance is one of three novels I checked out of my local library the day before the coronavirus pandemic sent my city, Paris, into total lockdown. That sequence of events was almost eerily appropriate, as Severance is also a novel about a fictional pandemic.
As usual, here is your Goodreads summary of the plot:
Candace Chen, a millennial drone self-sequestered in a Manhattan office tower, is devoted to routine. So she barely notices when a plague of biblical proportions sweeps New York. Then Shen Fever spreads. Families flee. Companies halt operations. The subways squeak to a halt. Soon entirely alone, still unfevered, she photographs the eerie, abandoned city as the anonymous blogger NY Ghost.
Candace won’t be able to make it on her own forever, though. Enter a group of survivors, led by the power-hungry IT tech Bob. They’re traveling to a place called the Facility, where, Bob promises, they will have everything they need to start society anew. But Candace is carrying a secret she knows Bob will exploit. Should she escape from her rescuers?
So I should admit, perhaps my checking out Severance merely a day before lockdown wasn't so eerie, as I chose to borrow Severance specifically for its subject matter. Some people want escapism during times of crisis; I wanted a roadmap. I hoped that if I saw similar events to what was currently happening play out on the page, it might give me some idea of what to expect.
As I had sort of perversely hoped, Severance's story seemed almost prophetic. The novel's story focuses on the impact of a global pandemic and its aftermath on one person, and while not every aspect of the book's events mirror coronavirus (for example, while Severance's Shen Fever also originates in China, it doesn't lead to widespread anti-Asian racism in the way that COVID-19 has), it is nonetheless incredibly resonant.
The book jumps back and forth in time, between Candace's life pre- and post-apocalypse. While the latter veers into dystopian territory that, thankfully, is not quite so reflective of real life yet, the pre-apocalyptic chapters were very, very relatable. In Candace's world, the impending pandemic lays bare the hollowness of everyday life, the inertia of which forces it to continue all the way up to the brink of global catastrophe. We see its repetitiveness and its loneliness, and how the pandemic both solidifies and threatens society's commitment to this quotidian lifestyle.
I don't want to spoil too much of the novel, as usual, because I would strongly recommend reading this book yourself, especially given its relevance to the current global situation. However, I would like to share a quote from Severance which I have actually previously shared on my Instagram. This section of the book is from just before a storm hits New York City, after which the Shen Fever pandemic will fully take over the country. I find it rather haunting, not just for the way it mirrors how many of us felt before COVID-19 properly hit, but because of what it says about our daily lives even beyond the pandemic:
I was like everyone else. We all hoped the storm would knock things over, fuck things up enough but not too much. We hoped the damage was bad enough to cancel work the next morning but not so bad that we couldn't go to brunch instead.
Brunch? he echoed skeptically.
Okay, maybe not brunch, I conceded. If not brunch, then something else.
A day off meant we could do things we'd always meant to do. Like go to the Botanical Garden, the Frick Collection, or something. Read some fiction. Leisure, the problem with the modern condition was the dearth of leisure. And finally, it took a force of nature to interrupt our routines. We just wanted to hit the reset button. We just wanted to feel flush with time to do things of no quantifiable value, our hopeful side pursuits like writing or drawing or something, something other than what we did for money. Like learn to be a better photographer. And even if we didn't get around to it on that day, our free day, maybe it was enough just to feel the possibility that we could if we wanted to, which is another way of saying that we wanted to feel young, though many of us were that if nothing else.
I don't know if you get that though, I said.
***
On that note, we have finally reached the end of the so-called 30-day book challenge. I hope that it has been of some entertainment or interest to those of you who have read any or all of the 30 posts. Whether you have read 1 or 30, I appreciate your reading what I've written and letting me know what you thought of it. I hope that some of you will continue to read future posts on this blog, too. If you think you will, I would love to know if you have any preference for what I write about next - perhaps you have a specific topic you'd like to me to give my thoughts on, or some recommendations you'd like to hear. Either way, fingers crossed it won't be too long until I'm back here with another post. Until then, thanks for reading!
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