That sums me up, really.

[apocalypsos]

I have an entire shelf devoted to my disaster books.

Granted, right now there's only ten books on there. I let a co-worker borrow my book on the Cocoanut Grove fire and never got it back, I need to get new copies of Alive and A Night To Remember because I long ago lost my copies of them (actually, I think I may have read my third copy of Alive until it fell apart, much like I did with two previous copies), I let another co-worker borrow The Circus Fire but I need a newer copy anyway, and there's a bunch of other books I've got to get my hands like stuff on the Iriquois Theater fire and Eastland and I don't have anything on September 11th, Katrina or the tsunami, so. *shrugs* Oh, and also I ordered a book on the Texas City explosion.

But right now what I have on the shelf is:

Krakatoa
The Children's Blizzard (Just got these and haven't had a chance to read them yet)
To Sleep With The Angels
Hiroshima
Day of Infamy
The Johnstown Flood
Curse of the Narrows
Triangle
Lusitania: An Epic Tragedy
Isaac's Storm

I may have the most depressing reading list of anybody I know. Heh.

For the record, I keep Lucifer's Hammer, Swan Song, and The Stand on a different but adjacent shelf, just 'cause. I'm a bit morbid, I think.

Comments

Good idea.

[seferin.livejournal.com]

We don't want them getting together and staging a coup. They could make terrorist demands until you bought the complete Stephanie Meyer collection to complete their web of evil.

[paranoidgrl.livejournal.com]

Have you read World War Z (An Oral History of the Zombie War)? I think it would fit in well in your fiction shelf.

[apocalypsos.livejournal.com]

Oh, yeah. My brother's got my copy right now. :)

[scary-being-me.livejournal.com]

Fantastic book.

Our CEO and CFO keep these highbrow business philosophy books in their offices; positioned so everyone sees them.

Our assistant controller has World War Z set up in his office the same way as a parody of them.

[apocalypsos.livejournal.com]

My brother doesn't read a lot, but he willingly read my copy of The Zombie Survival Guide and jumped at the chance to read World War Z. I almost want to send Max Brooks a thank-you note for getting the kid to read something.

[killerweasel.livejournal.com]

Did you ever read The Circus Fire: A True Story of an American Tragedy by Stewart O'Nan?

I read that back when it first came out and had to keep putting it down, walking away for a bit and then picking it up again. *shudders*

[apocalypsos.livejournal.com]

*snickers*

I let another co-worker borrow The Circus Fire but I need a newer copy anyway

;P

That one's one of my favorites. I think I've kinda killed my copy, though. I've read it about a BILLION times, and I left it in the trunk of my car for a few weeks and now it's all warped. I always have to put it down and walk away for a while when I get to that line about the survivors remembering the animals screaming as they died ... "But no animals died in the fire." GAH. GAH GAH GAH.

(It's not just me, right? O'Nan really does make Rick Davey sound like a smug self-righteous douchebag at the end, doesn't he?)

[witchofthedogs.livejournal.com]

OMG.

I do that. But I have "disaster books" with a subset of "sea-going disaster books". The latter far outstrips the former in number.

[witchofthedogs.livejournal.com]

BTW, The Curse of the Narrows is one of my favorites.

[apocalypsos.livejournal.com]

Oh, yes, that one's really great. And the situation just keeps getting worse, and worse, and WORSE. You can almost imagine the people from Halifax seeing the blizzard coming and being all, "Oh, you've got to be fucking KIDDING me."

[witchofthedogs.livejournal.com]

I just loaned it out to a friend with the simple exhortation, "You have to read this."

[madripoor-rose.livejournal.com]

Have you ever read The Worst Case Scenario Survival Handbooks? I'm not sure how much RL use they'd be, but they've come in handy for me while writing fanfic.

[anglepoiselamp.livejournal.com]

Have you read Connie Willis's Doomsday Book? It's about pandemics and a time traveller stuck in the middle of the Black Death. Just asking because it's my favourite disaster book. :D

[kanedax.livejournal.com]

isn't that what happened at the end of Timeline?

[anglepoiselamp.livejournal.com]

Wow, way to go, Michael Crichton. I checked up on Timeline and it does seem similar to Willis's novel (which was written years and years before Timeline). Okay, so the similarities are probably superficial, especially considering that one novel is an award-winning masterpiece and the other is, well, written by someone who I don't even feel like calling a novelist. :P

[kanedax.livejournal.com]

lol Yeah, Timeline was far from a decent novel. I'll have to pick yours up, though, to check it out.

[anglepoiselamp.livejournal.com]

Yeah, Doomsday Book is definitely worth a read! It won both the Hugo and the Nebula, and I love how it combines medical mystery with time travel. :)

Some of the disease stuff is pretty gross though (which is why it reads like a great horror novel to germophobes like me).

[polaris-starz.livejournal.com]

I read The Children's Blizzard and thought it was really fascinating. You should also check out Sudden Sea, about the great hurricane of 1938; I liked that one a lot.

I need to put these on my reading list, although I've already read The Johnstown Flood and Isaac's Storm. I tried to read Krakatoa, but something about his writing just bothers me.

[dimethirwen.livejournal.com]

A good book to add to the mix: Over the Edge: Death in the Grand Canyon. It's incredibly morbid and really well written.

[channonyarrow.livejournal.com]

The Children's Blizzard is AWESOME. I just read it, I was pretty fascinated by it, it's good. It has flaws, certainly, and if you're really looking for disaster, there's not much, but now I understand the workings of hypothermia much better.

If you want Depression-era disaster, Tim Egan's The Worst Hard Time is really, really good, and makes a nice bookend to The Children's Blizzard.

[coyotegoth.livejournal.com]

What's your favorite one-volume reference on the Titanic, out of curiosity?

[lillian13.livejournal.com]

If you liked Krakatoa, you'd like A Crack in the Edge of the World (http://www.amazon.com/Crack-Edge-World-California-Earthquake/dp/B000PD3MH0/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1222908931&sr=8-1) about the SF Quake, by the same author. Also, for fiction, nothing beats The Rift (http://www.amazon.com/Rift-Walter-J-Williams/dp/0061057940/ref=sr_1_12?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1222909270&sr=8-12) by Walter Jon Williams, because he gets the geology right.

[vivian-shaw.livejournal.com]

There's some good stuff out there about the Apollo 1 launchpad fire. I'm a big fan of Disaster/Tragedy Lit.

[wordweaverlynn.livejournal.com]

You are not alone. I have a dozen books just on earthquakes. You might like Man Is the Prey, if you can find a used copu on Amazon -- it will expand your horizons from mere weather to sharks, lions, and other killer animals. Do not allow your cats to read it.

I also read true crime, particularly the kind that involves family members slaughtering each other, sometimes after they've done even worse things.

[lilacsigil.livejournal.com]

I was reading Krakatoa, which was talking about Krakatoa being the worst tsunami disaster in human history, on December 26th 2004. Then it was suddenly outdated :(

[fufaraw]

There are two early Alastair MacLeans I keep: I read South by Java Head every winter when I'm freezing--puts me in hot country. And HMS Ulysses I save for August, when I'm dying of the heat--puts me in the North Atlantic in winter. Both are disaster reading.