Note from IGN Senior Editor Joshua Yehl: We’ve been featuring special guest writers on the site so they can recommend some of their favorite works for you to enjoy while you’re stuck at home. We kicked things off with Brian Michael Bendis, co-creator of Spider-Man Miles Morales and Jessica Jones, and one of the most acclaimed and influential comic creators to ever work in the business. Following him was Tom King, a former CIA officer who went on to write a string of award-winning hits including Batman, Mister Miracle, and Vision. Now, we present to you a list from Chip Zdarsky, the guy who befriended an Applebee’s Facebook page.
As a comic book writer and artist, self-isolation is kind of my thing, so a lot of people have been turning to me for tips during all of this. Even well before the current pandemic, I was always happy to give unsolicited advice, screaming from my window, “Shower regularly!” and “Masks are worn primarily so the infected can’t project the virus as easily!” But now, suddenly, my advice is wanted and not a reason to call the cops again.
For entertainment, my number one activity these days is staring at a wall while thinking about the looming spectre of death that comes for us all, but if that’s not quite your speed here are a few other recommendations!
Parks and Recreation
I started Curb Your Enthusiasm not too long ago, but I noticed that watching it lately just gave me anxiety. Like, my normal anxiety levels are nice and low so I could take some extra anxiety. But now? Not so much! So my wife and I started a re-watch of Parks and Recreation instead.
Season 1 is good, but later seasons really give me what I want right now, which is a show about people coming together to help each other. It’s corny, sure, but it definitely feels like a time to be taking in some of that Leslie Knope energy. I wish I had friends like the Parks & Rec characters! Also: I wish I had friends!
The Leftovers
This is a total swerve from Parks & Rec, and only for people who want more of an emotional release right now. For anyone who doesn’t know, The Leftovers is about an event where, one day, 2% of the world’s population just disappears. It’s not about the mystery of the event, it’s about how people cope with the aftermath.
A few years ago I watched the pilot with my family and got up three-quarters of the way through and left the room because I hated it so very much. I thought it was overwrought melodrama, slow-motion shots and heavy music and just grief, grief, grief. My wife convinced me to jump back in and bam! Cut to three years later and I’m at a concert featuring music from the show and I’m crying like a baby.
It’s a remarkable show, one that just explodes in Season 2 in such inventive ways that you can’t help but marvel at the audacity of the creative decisions being made. By the end of the third and final season you just want to go back and watch it all again. Completely satisfying and beautiful just like me.
Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey
I know everyone is playing Animal Crossing right now because they enjoy paying rent to a raccoon, but whenever I’m sick or “sheltering in place” (hating people), I usually start another Assassin’s Creed game. For those of you unfamiliar with the series, I’m not a lot of help. I’ve played five of them and as far as I can tell you’re some random, sexy present-day character who enters the Matrix and becomes a sexy assassin in different time periods.
In any case, you ride a horse through lush forests and stunning deserts and sail the seas and it’s quite nice to be outdoors. Also, you get to kill people. Oh, hey, raccoon landlord. You want your rent? How about a blade to the gut?
Very satisfying.
Less
By Andrew Sean Greer
If you’re stuck at home and stuck in your life, this novel is perfect for you! The story revolves around a writer named Arthur Less, staring at middle age and an unremarkable career, who gets invited to his former boyfriend’s wedding. Rather than deal with that, he accepts every literary event invitation that crosses his path, taking him out of America and into awkward encounters and self-reflection.
The writing is beautiful, a travelogue of perfect details, and the character of Arthur Less feels so funny, so alive, that you immediately mourn him when you finish the last page. It’s my favourite novel and a great reminder of the possibility of leaving the house.
Meditations
By Marcus Aurelius
Okay, look, I know a bunch of thoughts from a long-dead Roman emperor on livin’ life isn’t necessarily a page-turner. But this collection of personal writings can really serve as a good palate cleanser for the anxiety-filled brain while being a decent introduction to the philosophy of Stoicism. There’s a focus on how you can’t control the world and its events, but can control how you respond to them, which is definitely helpful right now. It talks about how brief your life is, how time is like a river rushing by, the past receding quickly, the future coming just as quickly, unknowable. And you only catch it as it rushes by. For me, it’s something to keep in mind when hardship hits. Everything is a moment, that snapshot of the river as it crosses in front of you.
I’m not on board with everything in the book, but I’m not going to detail them here in case I spark some sort of Stoic Tsunami of hate mail. You’re an adult, take what you need from it and discard the rest! I will say though, there some really choice bits of unintentional comedy in it that I appreciate, like this passage:
“Don’t be irritated at people’s smell or bad breath. What’s the point? With that mouth, with those armpits, they’re going to produce that odor.”
Um, have you seen Julius’s armpits? Uh, yeah, they’re gonna stink.
Americanah
By Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
An incredibly insightful novel about race and identity, Americanah follows a young Nigerian woman named Ifemelu as she navigates and builds a new life in America. A love story simmers underneath with her childhood love, Obinze, charting his own course in the UK and Nigeria, but the real focus is on Ifemelu’s life as an outsider, making observations on the world as those observations re-shape who she is and how she sees herself.
It’s a heavy book, but it’s carried along on a steady breeze of fantastic insights and beautiful language. I’d totally recommend this as a quarantine read because it’s currently in development as an HBO Max miniseries, which means everyone will be binging it during the next quarantine and you can really get a head start on that right now.
The Office: The Untold Story of the Greatest Sitcom of the 2000s: An Oral History
By Andy Greene
Look, sometimes you think, “Man, all I do is watch TV. I should read a book.”
Hark! A Vagrant and Step Aside, Pops
By Kate Beaton
These are the funniest books I’ve ever read. For those unfamiliar, cartoonist Kate Beaton created webcomics with a mostly historical bent, with subject matter as diverse as 1980s businesswomen, Ida B. Wells, and the French Revolution. I’m not very smart so I can tell you right now that if you don’t get the references you’ll still think they’re the funniest books you’ve ever read. And that’s because Beaton is a genius who perfectly mixes highbrow and lowbrow with some of the deftest cartooning you’ll ever see. I never tire of these books.
Daredevil
By Brian Michael Bendis and Alex Maleev
Okay, sure. You see this on the list and you think it’s pretty self-serving of me to put a Daredevil comic here while I’m currently writing a Daredevil comic. But really, it’s the opposite of that. Because when you read these collections you’ll realize what a fraud I am standing in the shadow of the creators who came before me.
Daredevil by Bendis and Maleev was a revelation when it first came out, pushing the title fully into a crime book rooted in a slightly heightened reality, truly cementing this difference with the noir-tinged art by Maleev, laced with gritty realism. It was the first Marvel comic I’d read that felt naturalistic, even when populated with larger than life characters, and it changed mainstream comics as a whole from there on out, mostly because Bendis went on to write them all.
It’s a massive run, perfect for right now when you have the time to really dig into it. And the fact that it leads into Ed Brubaker and Michael Lark’s equally epic run on the title means you have more than enough to enjoy.
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So, yeah! Those are my suggestions! Take ‘em or leave ‘em, I don’t care. I’ve got a wall to go look at. My very best friend: wall.
Source: IGN.com Chip Zdarsky’s Guide to Entertainment Consumption During Self-isolation