Too Long; Didn't Read

Oh,  Blood Memory Society , how did I loathe thee? Let me count the ways… I chose this book as my next read based solely on the short description,  “What if you could inherit your ancestors' memories? What implications would such an inheritance have on society?”  and boy, did I spend the next 350+ pages lamenting my life choices. The book opened simply with,  “Death and a dime bag,”  and went downhill from there…fast. Reading this book was like eating cauliflower; it was bland, tedious, and made no impression on me. I had gotten three chapters in—during which a mysterious fertility clinic was bombed and over 20 employees at a lab were deathly poisoned…you’d think that would be an exhilarating three chapters—before I even realized that I had no interest in the story at all and jotted down, “dull and unengaging” in my notes. The story follows “lucky sperm club” member Will, who, at 32, is already an accomplished fertility doctor, West Point graduate, exper...

The first thing I have to say about Sleep Over: An Oral History of the Apocalypse (hereafter referred to as ” Sleep Over ”) is that I genuinely have no idea why I requested to read it. As a reluctant gift recipient of short stories/anthologies/essays/collections et al., I don’t seek out books that lack a cohesive, consistent storyline throughout. So, why I chose to read a book that is quite literally nothing more than a collection of narratives through dozens of viewpoints, all relating to the same period of time, is beyond me. The second thing I have to say about Sleep Over is that I am genuinely thrilled that I requested to read it. Sleep Over is a collection of first-hand stories by survivors of the event/plague/situation that almost eradicated humanity—no, it’s not nuclear war or SARS or global warming…it’s insomnia. What you may assume could pose no greater threat than irritability and malaise, insomnia is actually quite terrifying and insidious when observed through a mor...