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Old 08-16-2022, 11:38 PM   #1
4691mls
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Are you ready to read fiction set during Covid?

I'd read the earlier books in the Ruth Galloway series by Elly Griffiths so when my library acquired the most recent book I put it on hold and then downloaded when it was available, all without reading the blurb. I often don't read the blurb if it's a book in a series because I'm already familiar with the author and characters and like going in not knowing what the plot is.

It became obvious in the first chapter that this book is set during the early pandemic era. I just didn't want to read that now. Maybe someday when it's farther in the past I'll be ready for it. I returned the book without reading past the first chapter. I them read a bunch of Goodreads reviews until I found enough spoilers to let me know what happened with the main characters.

I guess it's a difficult choice for an author - should they include the pandemic which has obviously affected all of our lives so dramatically? Or have their characters go on in a fictional world like the pandemic never happened?

So what do Mobilereaders think? Have you read fiction set during the pandemic? Or are you avoiding it?
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Old 08-17-2022, 12:05 AM   #2
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I've read a couple of books set during the pandemic. To me, it's more a matter of how the author addresses the pandemic. Do they dwell on it and make it the star of the book or do they have it as part of the background. The latter I can live with, the former, well, I've lived through it and really don't need to revisit it in glowing details (one of the books read like it was torn from the pages of a governmental Covid-19 update site and ended up being added to my rather short DNF list).

To completely disregard the pandemic in a book set in the last couple of years? Takes me back to Dallas and the it was all a dream season.
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Old 08-17-2022, 12:24 AM   #3
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Covid didn't affect my life at all. I was an almost total recluse even before the pandemic and so my life stayed the same in most aspects. I did get the infection once, but it was relatively mild, like your average flu. Nobody I know died from Covid or even was hospitalized.

Far more than by Covid I've been affected by other, personal events during the last 3 years (my mother's dementia and death). Covid had nothing to do with those.

As to reading about Covid, I genrerally don't like to read about anything even faintly resembling my actual life here and now (not that I've had a particularly miserable life or anything, it's just a personal preference). So I prefer not to read about Covid either, even though it had barely any influence on my life.
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Old 08-17-2022, 02:46 AM   #4
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Nobody I know died from Covid or even was hospitalized.
Hardly surprising given the overall mortality rate of 0.3%. Same here.
I know people damaged by the vaccine though.
The pandemic that wasn't.

Last edited by pdurrant; 08-23-2022 at 11:08 AM.
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Old 08-17-2022, 03:20 AM   #5
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...So what do Mobilereaders think? Have you read fiction set during the pandemic? Or are you avoiding it?
No haven't read fiction set during the pandemic. I doubt that I will ever want to.
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Old 08-17-2022, 03:23 AM   #6
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I've already read a few works set during the pandemic. They're not ABOUT it, they simply happen to to be set in that time. It didn't trouble me, even though I did lose many friends to COVID, and had some especially close friends come very close to dying of it. The pandemic changed the way the world was for 2 whole years, so I have no problem with authors acknowledging that in their works. I doubt I would read a book that made the pandemic central to the plot, but "set during? No problem.
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Old 08-17-2022, 03:26 AM   #7
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I already have. And I’m ok with it. I think it’s unrealistic to not write about it. I’m high risk covid. Even though I’m quadruple vaxxed it’s still dangerous for me to catch it. So the pandemic is still not over for me no matter what society keeps trying telling me and other disabled people. In the time of covid my life really didn’t change much. I was already a homebody. I’ve never gotten it. I just had my first test for two weeks ago. Lockdown was fine for me. What did change was my mom got diagnosed with cancer last fall. It was scary since we live in a red state where no one wears masks. Every bed in our hospital held a covid patient. Luckily she never got covid. I can understand people not wanting read about covid, but I question their reasons why. No one close to me died of it, but I had acquaintances who did. I also know people with long covid.
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Old 08-17-2022, 03:28 AM   #8
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Hardly surprising given the overall mortality rate of 0.3%. Same here.
I know people damaged by the vaccine though.
The pandemic that wasn't.
That's my main reason for not being interested in reading about it (or a story set in it). Not Covid, itself – I had it twice and didn't go to the doctor either time – but the restrictions, the attempt at forcibly "vaccinating" people with the experimental mRNA injections, etc. It all left a very sour taste in my mouth. Not interested in revisiting all this. Mostly I read older books or fantasy/science fiction, so it's not hard for me to avoid "current events" in my fiction reading.

Last edited by pdurrant; 08-23-2022 at 11:09 AM.
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Old 08-17-2022, 03:44 AM   #9
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I can understand people not wanting read about covid, but I question their reasons why.
As I said, it's not so much Covid specifically I don't want to read about, but contemporary life in general. I prefer fantasy, science fiction, historical fiction and the like, not something taking place in the world and time I myself live. And I've been that way since early childhood.
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Old 08-17-2022, 04:06 AM   #10
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Even though I’m quadruple vaxxed it’s still dangerous for me to catch it.
Oh dear, sorry to hear that.
So what please was the point of the vaccinations?
Sounds as though you'd also be in danger of flu, serious colds and other things that wouldn't bother healthy people too much.
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Old 08-17-2022, 04:37 AM   #11
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Oh dear, sorry to hear that.
So what please was the point of the vaccinations?
Sounds as though you'd also be in danger of flu, serious colds and other things that wouldn't bother healthy people too much.
Yes, this is how immunocompromise works. Welcome to our world. You get the vaccines hoping you'll be lucky enough for them to achieve something, but you can't rely on it.

Did you intend the snarky tone that came across in your comment?
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Old 08-17-2022, 04:39 AM   #12
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but the restrictions, the attempt at forcibly "vaccinating" people with the experimental mRNA injections, etc.
The trials were all voluntary, and EUA/Provisional approval is not an "experiment".

Last edited by pdurrant; 08-23-2022 at 11:18 AM.
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Old 08-17-2022, 05:02 AM   #13
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Yes, this is how immunocompromise works. Welcome to our world. You get the vaccines hoping you'll be lucky enough for them to achieve something, but you can't rely on it.

Did you intend the snarky tone that came across in your comment?

Some people just can’t be reasoned with and I no longer have the energy to try.

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Oh dear, sorry to hear that.

So what please was the point of the vaccinations?

Sounds as though you'd also be in danger of flu, serious colds and other things that wouldn't bother healthy people too much.

Yes, because I’m immunocompromised. Whenever I get sick I get sicker than most and it takes me longer to recover. And not answering the vaccine question because I find it to be a ridiculous question.

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As I said, it's not so much Covid specifically I don't want to read about, but contemporary life in general. I prefer fantasy, science fiction, historical fiction and the like, not something taking place in the world and time I myself live. And I've been that way since early childhood.


I don’t like contemporary stuff either. The stories I read that had Covid in their plots were sci-fi and mostly dystopian.
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Old 08-17-2022, 05:57 AM   #14
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Hardly surprising given the overall mortality rate of 0.3%. Same here.
I know people damaged by the vaccine though.
The pandemic that wasn't.
Looking at this site: https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/2017-2018.htm

there were 52,000 flu related deaths.

There have been ~1,000,000 so far since Covid started. So let's say 500,000 annually for the past two years. And that is with the extreme measures. I wonder what the number of deaths would have been if they treated it like the flu?

Yeah, not much of a pandemic.

Last edited by pdurrant; 08-23-2022 at 11:19 AM.
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Old 08-17-2022, 06:01 AM   #15
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I've read a couple of books set during the pandemic. To me, it's more a matter of how the author addresses the pandemic. Do they dwell on it and make it the star of the book or do they have it as part of the background. The latter I can live with, the former, well, I've lived through it and really don't need to revisit it in glowing details (one of the books read like it was torn from the pages of a governmental Covid-19 update site and ended up being added to my rather short DNF list).

To completely disregard the pandemic in a book set in the last couple of years? Takes me back to Dallas and the it was all a dream season.
Perfect comment.
It's also very strange to read a book written in 1940s to 1950s set during WWII that makes no mention of it. Some well known authors, mostly for younger readers.

But few books mention the so called "Spanish Flu" of about 1918 to 1920, which was actually brought to Europe by US soldiers. Cities in USA that locked down and closed theaters, sport and churches had low death rate and places in USA that ignored it had massive death rates.
Also some places used masks which dramatically reduced the spread.
Quote:
The earliest documented case was March 1918 in Kansas, United States, with further cases recorded in France, Germany and the United Kingdom in April. Two years later, nearly a third of the global population, or an estimated 500 million people, had been infected in four successive waves. Estimates of deaths range from 17 million to 50 million, and possibly as high as 100 million, making it the second deadliest pandemic in human history after the Black Death bubonic plague of 1346–1353.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_flu

So it depends on the book and audience as to if the Covid-19 is mentioned. But i agree it shouldn't be central. Nor should people promote "conspiracy theory" books about it.

I agree that anything clearly set in the time period of Covid-19 that is a realistic kind of fiction rather than some kind of alternate reality Naomi Novak, Michael Moorcock, P.K. Dick) or floating timeline (Famous Five, Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew) should have it as the background. Also perhaps (but not always) various wars & conflicts in period (Korea, Suez, many Middle East, Gulf, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Falklands, Northern Ireland, Balkans and Ukraine). Conflicts, civil wars, independence: Irish, Mexican, US, Indian, maybe 4 English civil wars.
Jane Austen hardly mentions the Napoleonic Wars, yet Heyer writing RomComs set in the same period sometimes has them central. Tolstoy's "special operations and peace" is a different kind of epic.

So depends on the book: audience, genre, location etc. But certainly Covid ought not to be central or the start, not for many years or decades.
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