hello everyone I'm Reuben Heppelthwaite
welcome back to keep reading your
channel for great book recommendations
to get you through the coronavirus
lockdown we're now well into week five
of the lockdown so I hope you're keeping
fit and healthy and finding ways to look
after your mental well-being
having some downtime when you're reading
is just one thing that can help I've
also been limiting the amount of news
I'm taking in and making sure the news
that I do read or listen to is
from trusted sources avoiding any
conspiracies or fake news staying
connected with the people you care about
is really important to you know it's so
easy these days with video calling as
well
anxiety UK suggests practicing the Apple
technique to deal with any anxiety or
worries you may have the acronym Apple
stands for acknowledge pause pull back
let go and explore you can find out much
more about this at anxietyUK.or.uk
this week I'm wearing my stone Island
wool beanie it makes me feel like I'm
heading off to the home of football the
London Stadium with my eldest son to
watch our team West Ham United in the
Premier League come on you irons this
week I'm going to recommend a very
pertinent book in the current pandemic
climate it's a bit of a classic winner
of the Nobel Prize for Literature
published in 1947 by the absurdist
philosopher Albert Camus the book is
called The Plague
here it is the plague or la peste in its
original French language The Plague was Camus' most
successful novel and he'd become a
nationally respected figure in France
during and after the Second World War as
a hero of the intellectual resistance
and his novel was regarded by many as
an allegory of France's trauma during
the four-year German occupation the book
seems intensely personal to the
writer and it's written in a sparse and
haunting prose
the book is about a virus that spreads
uncontrollably from rats to humans and
ends up destroying half of the
population of the ordinary but modern
town of Oran on the Algerian coast the
story is told through the eyes of the
unheroic Dr. Rieux and it's widely
thought that this was a fictional
version of Camus himself the town is
forced into quarantine during the
epidemic and various characters respond
in their own way and I found this really
interesting actually as the events
mirrored some of the things that we've
all probably witnessed over the last few
weeks in our current lockdown situation
as the novel opens there's an
eerie sort of normality at the beginning of
the virus outbreak and then with the
pacing of a thriller the horror begins
the people of Oran associate the
plague as something's backward that
belongs in another age it's impossible
that it should be the plague everyone
knows that
has vanished from the West says
one character and Camus adds
sardonically yes everyone knew that
except the dead
my personal opinion is that the plague
isn't merely a metaphoric tale about the
German occupation of World War two where
you know where the Nazis are the
pestilence and the health teams are the
French Resistance etc I think that Camus
is also writing about a deeper
philosophical meaning that we are
unbeknownst to us constantly living
through a type of plague subject to the
chance nature of human undertakings which
relates to his core philosophical belief
the individual should embrace the absurd
condition of human existence this is a
brilliant novel and you know in my
humble opinion everybody should read
this at the moment as it gives great
insight into the mental struggles during
the lockdown and in particular the pain
of loneliness
the narrator remarks early in the story
that the first thing that the plague
brought to our fellow citizens was
exile and that being separated from a
loved one was the greatest agony of that
long period of exile
the plague teaches us no lessons as that
wasn't really Camus' style but it does
have some thought-provoking messages and
one that I particularly liked was from
Dr. Rieux the narrator in the book you
know when he said it may seem a
ridiculous idea but the only way to
fight the plague is with decency 
I've got a few books that
have been recommended to me via comments
on the channel so shout out to a
Chris Chubb who recommended high fidelity
by Nick Hornby and also to Campbell
Murray who recommended the war doctor by
David Nott and also a shout-out to Oprah
Winfrey who recommended the water dancer
by Ta-Nehisi Coates so that's this
recommendation done and I'm pretty glad
about that getting pretty hot under the
old beanie here remember to subscribe
to the channel today for more
recommendations from me hit the bell to
turn on notifications send your own
recommendations in the comments and I'll
shout them out in the next post I'll be
back with another recommendation next
Thursday and another hat in the meantime
stay safe stay healthy stay positive and
keep reading
