Welcome back to Book Break! In today's video I'm recommending books from a genre that is so popular
with so many of you, and that is apocalyptic books. And apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic books
have always been mega-popular, but perhaps even more so now that we've lived through
this seemingly apocalyptic year. So if you're ready to get spooked, keep watching. I'm going
to start with The Silence by Don DeLillo, which is set in the very near future, in fact Super Bowl
Sunday 2022. So a group of friends have gathered at one of their apartments to watch the game
when suddenly the screen goes blank. They check their computers, their phone, the television,
all of it has gone completely silent. So this is a very short, very tense novel about what happens
when the technology that has been connecting us is gone, and it's ultimately very reflective on
what it really means to be human. Now another book that's set in our very near future,
but this time one that was written a bit longer ago, is The Parable of the Sower
by Octavia Butler. This is the first book in the Earthseed series, which is the series that
predicted Donald Trump. They were written in the 90s but set in the 2020s and going onto the 2030s.
And I have to say they sound dangerously close to life as we know it now. So the first one,
Parable of the Sower, is set in 2025, in an America that has been torn apart by war, disease,
and an extreme water shortage. And then in the second book, Parable of the Talents, we meet this
extremist presidential candidate who actually runs on the slogan "make america great again".
It's pretty gritty brutal stuff. These books are not escapist fiction, but they feel so timely,
and they're all about how humanity will have to change and adapt as the world changes. Now what is
the word that you most commonly hear paired with apocalypse? Of course it's zombie apocalypse. So
fans of The Walking Dead TV show should definitely read both the original Walking Dead graphic novels
and the book series it inspired. Starting with this one, Rise of the Governor by Robert Kirkman
and Jay Bonansinga. So Robert Kirkman is the author of the original Walking Dead graphic
novels, and those starred the character Rick Grimes, a small town deputy who woke up from
a coma into a zombie apocalypse. And now Robert Kirkman has teamed up with Jay Bonansinga to write
this standalone series set in the same universe but with new characters and new storylines.
So in this first one we get a lot of the backstory behind the governor, who is the most terrifying
villain in the Walking Dead universe, possibly in any universe. And another one for the zombie fans:
The Gospel of Z by Stephen Graham Jones. So this one is set 10 years after zombies have destroyed
the world, but in this one it's not zombies who are the villains, it's the surviving humans
who are the most terrifying. In this new world humans are now ruled by two major organizations:
the military and the church. And our main character Jory Gray, his girlfriend has just
left him to join the church, so in his quest to find her he ends up exposing a whole terrifying
dark underbelly to both organizations. And if it's not zombies, it's aliens. The War of the Worlds by
H.G. Wells starts a few years before this alien invasion, when astronomers first start to notice
flashes of light on the surface of Mars. So we get a bit of creepy build-up that something is coming,
and then aliens invade. And they are not here to make friends, they march on London and declare war
against humanity. And this book was published in 1897, and it's one of the first books to
detail a conflict between humans and creatures from somewhere else in space, which of course
is a genre that is not going anywhere. Station Eleven by Emily St John Mandel is a book that got
a lot of attention this year for being about the before and after of a deadly flu pandemic, but
the pandemic in this one however, the terrifying Georgian flu, very quickly wipes out pretty much
the entire population, and this book then deals with the aftermath set about 20 years into the
future. And we follow this traveling group of actors and musicians as they travel through this
at times rather bleak and violent landscape, but it's also a really beautiful book about the fact
that wherever there is humanity there will still be art. And now to merge two of the themes we've
talked about so far, Severance by Ling Ma is a pandemic book about a zombie apocalypse. So our
main character Candice is a 20-something living in New York working in publishing when a mysterious
fever starts to spread across the globe. And we watch her trying to cling on to normal life for as
long as possible, but we also get flash forwards to some time in the future when Candice has joined
a group of travellers trying to make their way to a safe haven at that old zombie story cliche:
a shopping mall. This book is such a strong commentary on the monotony of modern life,
and the unique form that these zombies take will make your daily routine seem a lot more sinister.
And then one more pandemic one, Not Forgetting the Whale by J.W. Ironmonger is apocalypse-lite
with a much more hopeful outlook. So this is set in a very small seaside town in Cornwall,
like very small, and this town is suddenly rocked one day by the arrival of a mysterious
young man running away from the city, where he has just predicted a major global financial collapse.
And so this very quirky little town ends up quarantining, and it's a really sweet story
actually about all of the people in this town and the nearby area uniting and helping each other.
Now everyone has been buzzing this year about Megan Hunter's new book The Harpy, but her first
book The End We Start From is every bit as eerily brilliant. So this book is set an unspecified time
in the future when London becomes submerged under floodwaters, just as a new mother gives
birth to her first child. So this family are then forced to flee their home and move further north
searching for safety. And they become refugees moving from place to place. And the book is really
poetically written, and it's very minimalist as well, she really allows you to fill in a lot of
the gaps with your own imagination, which I absolutely loved, but all while pulling you
through this strange and terrifying new world. And now all the way to the other side of the world for
On the Beach by Neville Shute which is about the last survivors of the nuclear world war 3,
which has wiped out the entire world, and these last few survivors are waiting on a beach
in southern Australia for the radioactive cloud that they know is headed their way,
and is sure to bring a pretty horrific death. So it's pretty grim stuff, but you just fall in
love with this cast of characters who just insist on being so human all the way to the end, even as
they face down the literal end of the world. And just one more I wanted to mention that's coming
out next year in May is Sixteen Horses by Greg Buchanan. This is a debut novel that you are not
going to want to miss. Sixteen Horses is set in a seaside English town where Detective Alec Nichols
uncovers sixteen horses' heads buried on a farm, each with one eye facing the sun. So really creepy
stuff. And the investigation then goes on to uncover a whole series of crimes in the community,
which end up all being linked to something deadly in the ground itself - mysterious. I
am such a huge fan of apocalyptic books, so please do leave your recommendations below,
I will definitely read them, and in the meantime I will link here to our playlist of all of the other
videos about crime, thriller, and horror books, while you're in a spooky mood. See you next time!