Get Off Your Duff Reading List: Coronavirus Edition

I think I speak for most of us when I say... I am losing my damn mind! This whole social distancing, self-quarantining, stay at home lifestyle is taking its toll on my sanity. I happen to be part of the population not laid off, but also not occupied by work (it's not exactly legal to take aquarium animals home with you during a pandemic) and thus I am part of the population that has found themselves at home with heaps of free time. And there's only so many crafts one can make or things one can clean before the mind starts to unravel. So I've been doing a lot of reading to stave off the boredom. It's great! I'm learning new things, being entertained and inspired, and when I get jittery I can walk laps around the downstairs without having to press pause.

In no real order , these are five of my favourite quarantine reads thus far. There's not really a theme as far as genre or audience are concerned, the only similarity is they are all fascinating reads I struggled to put down. And good news, you don't even have to order most of them from Amazon! If you have a library card, chances are your library has these titles. Many libraries are switching their inventory over to ebooks during this time, if they didn't already "stock" ebooks as a normal checkout option before all this went down, which means you'll be able to check these titles out during quarantine with little to no wait time. Depending on where you are in the World, some of the titles might be harder to find than others as a few of them are regional works. But then, there's always Amazon.

1) Exposure

Available as an audiobook from most public libraries, "Exposure" is the story of the lawyer, Robert Bilott, that single handedly took DuPont (the World's largest chemical company, responsible for bringing humanity water resistant makeup, stain resistant textiles & carpets, Teflon, and the like) to court again and again for crimes against the American people when the waters around their Parkersburg, West Virginia factory were found to contain perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA)—and he's still going strong. The twist? Bilott started out as a corporate defense attorney defending the very chemical company he then made it his life's mission to bring to justice.

Written as a thriller, this real life horror story paints the very real picture of the largest corporate crime coverup in American history. Entirely nefarious and sadly true to the core, this is the story of how legacy companies in America are knowingly and willingly killing the public and getting away with it time and time again for the singular purpose of making a buck. From companies like DuPont's that make chemicals for "better living" to the fracking and opioid industries, a lot of money can be made in exploiting human ignorance. But this one isn't just for Americans; sadly every nation has a company like DuPont that is careless with the lives of its community. And, spoiler alert, the DuPont chemicals found in the people of Parkersburg are found in every single bloodstream on Earth. There's no way to escape them. Once a chemical—especially one as ubiquitous as DuPont's, that are used in a wide array of goods that are in turn utilized all over the World—enters the water table, we're toast. Understandably then, this book is not a light read, but it's so very important and will wake you up to what is going on inside your own body.

The movie Dark Waters, starring Mark Ruffalo as Bilott, is based off this book and depicts the events that led to Bilott challenging DuPont in court on the grounds that they were knowingly poisoning 100,000 residents of Parkersburg, Vienna, Little Hocking, and Lubeck for fifty years. If reading isn't your thing and you can't be bothered with the audiobook, I highly recommend the movie. It is exceptionally well done and very accurate in its depiction of the case and all the statistics provided.

If none of that has convinced you, let this New York Times article pique your interest.

2) In the Shadow of Man

For a more light-hearted and inspiring read, try this third edition release of the World's foremost primatologist, Jane Goodall. Easily her most well known book, Dr. Goodall has published 30 books, and that's not including her purely scientific works, but there are none that capture the story of her beloved chimpanzees at the Gombe Stream Research Centre in Tanzania quite like "In the Shadow of Man."

A thrilling documentation of Dr. Goodall's now 60-year study of man's closest relative, she starts at the very beginning with her fateful meeting with Louis Leakey, the famous anthropologist that gave Dr. Goodall the chance to embark to the wilds of Africa at the unexperienced age of twenty-six. With only her mother and a couple African guides, Dr. Goodall sets out for Africa to earn the local chimps' trust so they will allow her to get close enough to observe their behaviour.

From earning their trust to making the World's first observation of chimps making and using tools to hunt—a skill thought to solely belong to humans at that time—to being witness as a polio epidemic wipes out whole family trees, "In the Shadow of Man" chronicles the lives, joys, triumphants, tribulations, deaths, and fears of the chimpanzees of Gombe. And all the while there's Jane with her binoculars, meticulously observing and recording it all.

While the lives of the chimpanzees are fascinating and the stories Dr. Goodall tells are enthralling, it's the respect and compassion with which she lovingly recounts the lives of the chimps she came to know by name that will keep you turning page after page.

Oh, and there are pictures. Some never before seen.

3) Flash Bang

This title you might have to order online, but never fear, Amazon is here! A bit indy, a bit grunge, a lot real, this book is what happens when an army vet walks into a Starbucks for the first time after a Middle East deployment and sees the tragically misspelled name awaiting them on their pumpkin spice latte. Not literally, of course, but nearly. Edgy, hilarious, and brutally honest, "Flash Bang" does deal with army vets, and what happens when those vets find themselves as civilians in a World they can no longer see the same.

An action-packed adventure from start to finish, "Flash Bang" follows Sebastian and two army buddies around Denver, Colorado (really fun for anyone familiar with the area is recognizing all the locations, down to the very real storefronts) as they make a living mugging the bad guys and claiming the reward money when they turn the perps over to the authorities. It's one way of dealing with PTSD, I guess, until the team is sought out and hired to track down the murderer of a local teenage boy.

The characters are raw and authentic and easy to fall in love with. They have daily struggles like you and me, and this book does a beautiful job highlighting all the ways veterans are not at all like you and me—the unique struggles that come with fighting wars, killing people, being shot at, being pushed to the edge of sanity and humanity, and then being plopped back down in the middle of "real life" and expected to pick right back up again, old hat.

A really enjoyable read, even for those with no military connections or interests, I had to stop a half dozen times to run for the toilet I was laughing so hard. Above everything else, this book shows how a dash of dark humor and the friends we choose as family really can get us through anything life throws at us. And fun fact: that's the author's hand on the cover.

*Disclaimer for the faint at heart: this is a book about army vets. Expect profanity and some mild sexual references. And shooting, obviously.

4) Nona & Me

While a YA novel, I think this book paints the best picture of the disparities between Aboriginal and White life in Australia. Set in the rural mining town of Yirrkala, in north-east Arnhem Land in the Northern Territory, "Nona & Me" follows two best friends—one White, one Aboriginal—as they grow up together and society forces them apart.

Nona and Rosie started life as yapas, sisters, but when Nona moves away Rosie spends her days hanging out in town with her swanky White friends from school. Six years later, tragedy in her Aboriginal tribe brings Nona back on the heels of a heated political announcement meant to highlight the division between the Aboriginal community and the White townspeople. For any of you not familiar with Aboriginal history, think American segregation of Black and White, but happening everywhere you look in 2020.

Atkins does a phenominal job highlighting the White vs. Aboriginal tensions that still plague Australia to this day, which she accomplishes by focusing on those who find themselves caught in the middle of two very different Worlds. This book is about family, friendship, and the line that blurs one into the other. Resonant with anyone who has ever felt trapped between to different realities, above all else this book is about the identity we choose for ourselves.

White not auto/biographical in the slightest, Atkins wrote "Nona & Me" while living in the remote Aboriginal community in which her novel is set. The inspiration for this book, therefore, came from all around her: from watching her children play with the kids in their adopted Yolngu family to watching two girls—one White, one Aboriginal—happily swimming together in the community pool. This story is their story and her story as much as it is Rosie and Nona's.

Beautiful and relatable, it's no wonder this book won Book of the Year in 2016. A tad difficult to track down outside of Australia, I had the best luck on Amazon, as per usual.

5) The Rhino with Glue-On Shoes

Cute, cuddly, and crazy, "The Rhine with Glue-On Shoes" compiles dozens of hilarious, zany, and heart-stopping stories from, zoo, aquarium, and wildlife veterinarians. From a daring root canal on a three-thousand pound hippo to one doctor’s heartbreaking effort to save a critically ill lemur; a moray eel diagnosed with anorexia and a herd of bison running loose in a Paris suburb; a vet desperately trying to save an orphaned whale calf in one of America's most well-renown aquariums; to dung beetles and a kangaroo spinal surgery performed by a leading human doctor, this book offers a rare and fascinating glimpse into the world of exotic animals and the doctors who care for them.

Here, Spelman and Mashima compile the real-life tales of daring procedures for patients weighing tons or ounces, treating symptoms ranging from broken bones to a broken heart, as told by the pioneering zoological veterinarians—men and womyn—on the cutting edge of a new medical frontier. These life-and-death dramas (for the patient and the doctor) will forever change the way you think about wild animals and the bonds we share with them as humans, caretakers, and stewards of the Earth.

Acts of rescue, kindness, and cross-disciplinary cooperation between vets and other top scientists unfold as these highly trained specialists race against time and circumstance to save the lives of some of the most exotic animals on the planet—and some of the rarest. These unforgettable stories capture the bonds that develop between vets and their animal patients, the ingenious treatments many vets have tried, and the remarkable new insights modern medical technology is giving us into the physiology and behavior of wild animals.

At once exciting, stressful, and clinically fascinating (though not gross), the stories in this collection represent some of the most remarkable, moving, and unusual cases ever taken on by zoological vets. A chronicle of discovery, compassion, and cutting-edge medicine, "The Rhino with Glue-On Shoes" is not just for aspiring vets, but for animal lovers, science buffs, and anyone who loves a good tail.