The book that helped me get through the most recent global pandemic is Jennifer Wright’s Get Well Soon: History’s Worst Plagues and The Heroes That Fought Them. The 2017 work illustrated global pandemics aren’t nearly as rare as you might think. But the big takeaway, the reason why the funny (yes, it’s possible to have humor when writing about death and disease) text has stuck with me, is the thing that got survivors through all previous global pandemics. It’s not medicine (it’s not-not medicine, it’s just more than that), but compassion.

More than a year after reading this breezy (yes, it’s possible to have a breezy book about death and disease) book, the lesson of how to get through is helping me get through this global pandemic (I realize I could posit the pandemic is over but just because I live in an American city with very good COVID numbers does not mean the pandemic is over, just look at global numbers if you want to be shaken back into reality).

Since Wright’s work is the book that helped me and I’ve recommended the most in the last year, I asked Wright for a book that helped her in any way.

Jennifer Wright: The book that helped me the most as a young writer was Bird by Bird. I must have read it over a dozen times as a teenager. The title stems from an anecdote in the author’s childhood where her brother was overwhelmed by a school project about birds. Her father told him just to take it “bird by bird.” The only way I can write any kind of book is by breaking assignments down into small manageable chunks for myself — say, writing 500 words a day.

The writing advice contained within Bird by Bird is also hilarious — and probably shaped my notion that you can convey valuable information most effectively if you do it in a funny way. It’s by Anne Lammot, and it’s something every writer in the world should own.  

Listen to Jennifer Wright on You, Me, Them, Everybody

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