Task #5: Read a book about a natural disaster

[Jessica]

Chrissy wrote: "I’ve been meaning to read The Johnstown Flood for a few years, this seems like a perfect opportunity!"

Great choice!

[Candace]

I read A Fire Story for this task. It's a graphic novel about a wild fire near Napa Valley. I enjoyed it.

[Debbie]

Just picked Wave up from the library.
Check out this book on Goodreads: Wave http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/15...

[Terra]

Natural disasters really make me anxious. So for this topic I’m trying to find an interesting book about the eruption of mount Vesuvius (I’m figuring such an old disaster will affect me a bit less) or a fictional option.

[Amanda]

Ana wrote: "Natural disasters really make me anxious. So for this topic I’m trying to find an interesting book about the eruption of mount Vesuvius (I’m figuring such an old disaster will affect me a bit less) or a fictional option."

Pompeii is a fictional account of the eruption of Mount Vesuvius. It's been years since I read it so I can't tell you too much but I remember that I liked it.

[Emily]

Anyone care to weigh in if The Yellow House would qualify as a book about natural disaster?

[Bonnie G.]

Emily wrote: "Anyone care to weigh in if The Yellow House would qualify as a book about natural disaster?"

Yes, it has definitely been mentioned on this thread numerous times. I plan to read it, I have heard good things.

[Natalie Piccotti]

Going to read midnight in Chernobyl- ira been on my list so great time to read it for the challenge

[Tanu]

Natalia, MiC is a great book, but it wouldn’t qualify as a natural disaster.

[Westiegirl]

Does the book have to be nonfiction? For example, I just read No Judgments (Little Bridge Island, #1) by Meg Cabot which is just a fun beach read but does involve a large hurricane. If it has to be nonfiction that's fine, I was just curious.

[Tanu]

Westiegirl wrote: "Does the book have to be nonfiction? For example, I just read No Judgments (Little Bridge Island, #1) by Meg Cabot which is just a fun beach read but does involve a large hurricane. If it has to be..."

Nope, I’m assuming it can be fiction as well, unless the prompt specifies.

[Brooke]

I read Dry by Neal Shusterman I powered through this title in two days. A great quick read that really makes you think about what you would do if you didn't have water.

[Teresa]

I read Station Eleven. Definitely a 5 star book, although my timing wasn't comfortable (it's about a flu pandemic). According to the US National Library of Medicine
National Institutes of Health, that qualifies as a natural disaster.

[Ashley]

I would second Station Eleven. Trail of Lightning should work for this, as well as a couple of other categories.

[Aly]

Environmental disaster are not really my thing, I'm more of a medical infectious disease disaster person. I'm currently reading Pandemic: Tracking Contagions, from Cholera to Ebola and Beyond which is about the rapid spread of infectious pathogens which given the current state of the world, seems very much like a natural disaster to me

[Megan]

I read an Advanced Reader's Edition copy of The Last Train to Key West by Chanel Cleeton, which dealt with the 1935 Labor Day hurricane that devastated the Florida Keys.

[Wellington]

I have read Eruption by Steve Olson for this prompt. Some of the discussion about the logging business was a little long, but overall it was very interesting and I liked it.

[Shelley]

I went with The Murmur of Bees where the Spanish Flu plays a strong part.

[Emerging]

Change of plans for me due to the pandemic. I had planned on Isaac's Storm: A Man, a Time, and the Deadliest Hurricane in History by Erik Larson. Instead, I am reading Typhoon by Joseph Conrad. I'm not a big Conrad fan, but I am actually liking this much more than I expected. Still want to read "Isaac's Storm" at some point!

[[deleted user]]

I just finished Rising Tide: The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and How It Changed America by John M. Barry and highly recommend it! It's a bit dense, but so eye-opening.

[Marie]

If you want more of a fictional apocalypse fantasy one, Poison Princess might be a good fit. I read it last year.
I'm really stuck on this one, with everything going on right now I'm a bit put off on disasters.

[Toni]

Emerging wrote: "Change of plans for me due to the pandemic. I had planned on Isaac's Storm: A Man, a Time, and the Deadliest Hurricane in History by Erik Larson. Instead, I am reading [..."

I found "Isaac's Storm" a great read. What the 1900 hurricane did to Galveston is amazing & scary.

[Toni]

Leah wrote: "I just finished Rising Tide: The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and How It Changed America by John M. Barry and highly recommend it! It's a bit dense, but so eye-opening."

I have this, but haven't yet read it. I recently finished Barry's book about the 1918 influenza pandemic. It was great! "The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History."

[Teresa]

I read another book that fits this category, Life As We Knew It. It's YA and centers on a teen girl and her family after an asteroid knocks the moon closer to the earth, which causes cataclysmic changes in nature.

[Octavia]

I read Krakatoa: The Day the World Exploded: August 27, 1883 by Simon Winchester for this. It was alright, but it suffered majorly from the author's constant inability to stay on topic. The first half of the book has very little to do with anything eruption-related - it's him rambling on about background he thinks might be useful, but the lack of focus begins to drag, and quickly. The second half of the book is much better than the first, if only because he's actually talking about the volcano then!

[Sherri]

I read The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History by John M.Barry for this prompt. This was my last prompt. I'm done with the challenge.

[Emerging]

Sherri wrote: "I read The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History by John M.Barry for this prompt. This was my last prompt. I'm done with the challenge."
Congrats! I finished earlier this month. It's a great feeling, isn't it?

[[deleted user]]

I'm reading South. It's a beast of a book. Antarctic shipwrecks, blizzards and gales. Feels like an early version of the show, 'I Shouldn't Be Alive'.

[Caryn]

I saved this prompt for last because I really didn't want to read another nonfiction book and many of the fictional books suggested I have read. I'm so glad I waited because I just got Max Brooks' newest book Devolution: A Firsthand Account of the Rainier Sasquatch Massacre. He wrote World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War which I loved. His writing style is cobbling together reports, interviews, journals, etc. and I really like that sometimes.
So Devolution: A Firsthand Account of the Rainier Sasquatch Massacre has a volcanic eruption (natural disaster) that unearths a group of Big Foot, who in turn massacre a small community. I'm considering that as a natural disaster also, because really what else could it be! When animals attack has to be a natural disaster!

[Milena]

Caryn wrote: "I saved this prompt for last because I really didn't want to read another nonfiction book and many of the fictional books suggested I have read. I'm so glad I waited because I just got Max Brooks' ..."

I read Devolution for that also, so I agree with you.

[Sheri]

I read Wave, it was a really hard read to get through. Ended up stopping and starting several times, I don't know that I'd really recommend it.

[Sneha]

I read Rebecca Solnit's A Paradise Built in Hell and Naomi Klein's Naomi KleinOn Fire: The Case for the Green New Deal

[Heather]

I read Salvage the Bones by Jesmyn Ward. Fiction, takes place during Hurricane Katrina. It was excellent.

[Mandie]

Heather wrote: "I read Salvage the Bones by Jesmyn Ward. Fiction, takes place during Hurricane Katrina. It was excellent."

I read that last year, so I did a nonfiction book about Hurricane Katrina that was about people from some very southern Louisiana parishes.

In any case, though, Salvage the Bones left me so emotionally drained. One of my very close friends is from the area where Jesmyn is from and she went through Katrina first hand when the eye went over their hometown. Our theory is that a lot of the scenes in the last 1/4 or so of the book are autobiographical. She was so traumatized by the storm that she didn't write for a number of years.

[Megan]

Sheri wrote: "I read Wave, it was a really hard read to get through. Ended up stopping and starting several times, I don't know that I'd really recommend it."

It was an awful book tbh

[Sheri]

I'd think it would count, earthquakes are pretty central to it. There's also other environmental conditions that come into play

[Bonnie G.]

Anyone still looking to fill this one -- I read a fiction and a nonfiction for this, and both were fairly short.

Isaac's Storm: A Man, a Time, and the Deadliest Hurricane in History 4-stars
A Children's Bible 5-stars

[Melissa]

Salvage the Bones with Hurricane Katrina is the book I chose

[Noam]

Sherri wrote: "I read The Yellow House by Sarah M.Broom this year. I think it works for this prompt. I loved this book so you will see me suggesting it for every prompt it works for."

Thanks for posting this rec! I started Salvage the Bones, but I think it's too heavy for where I'm at right now, so it will be a book for another month. I just got The Yellow House out from the library based on this recommendation. :)

[[deleted user]]

I read A Fire Story by Brian Fies today in one sitting.

The telling of how the 2017 California fire ripped through their neighbourhood is heart wrenching. I cried too many times to count.

Reading people going through a natural disaster of that scale is making me want to do more to help people plus the root causes of these disasters.

[Virginia]

I read The Long Winter.