Yes, many of us are confined to our homes as much as possible for the sake of public safety.
Maybe you've just traveled between states and need to undergo a mandatory 14-day isolation; maybe you or your loved ones are immunocompromised. Even while we stock up on water and canned goods and MacGyver ourselves some DIY hand sanitizer, don't forget to refresh your book collection with an assortment of good reads. From eerily prescient tales about dystopian futures to long inter-generational novels about epic family dramas, these are our book recommendations for your quarantine.
1. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey
When you start to feel stir crazy, take solace in the fact that you're probably quarantined within your own home–or at least not a 1960s psych ward. Ken Kesey's 1962 classic captures the frustration of an individual fighting against institutional authority beyond his control.
▲2. Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
Disturbing and surreal, this classic still captures the absurdity and violence of social control and megalomaniacal madmen.
▲3. Invitation to a Beheading by Vladimir Nabokov
Nabokov's novel creates a dream-like world in which one man is unable to conform to a dystopian society and is sentenced to death. He writes down his final thoughts as he awaits his execution.
▲4. The Gene: An Intimate History by Siddhartha Mukherjee
While you're spending time at home to protect your immune system, why not read about what's lurking inside your body other than germs?
▲5. Island of Dr. Moreau by H. G. Wells
This 1896 classic immerses you in the surreal world of a mad scientist who's isolated himself on an island in order to experiment with animal vivisection and create hybrids of beast and man.
▲6. The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt
This Pulitzer Prize-winning novel is an epic account of how 13-year-old Theo loses his mother in an explosion at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and grows up to become a con artist who deals in high-end fake antiques.
▲7. Pachinko by Min Jin Lee
This sweeping inter-generational novel follows a Korean young woman who falls for a enigmatic stranger on the cusp of World War II.
▲8. Blindness by Jose Saramago
In this renowned novel by a Nobel Prize-winning author, a global epidemic of blindness afflicts every resident in an average unnamed city.
▲9. The Sirens of Titan by Kurt Vonnegut
Often called Vonnegut's best book, The Sirens of Titan is a whirlwind journey through space and time as America's most deplorable citizen–the selfish billionaire fool Malachi Constant–is invited to journey across the galaxy to escape his own fate.
▲10. Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari
A historian brings you a detailed look at the history of mankind as just another species trying to survive on Earth.
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