H. G. Bells

Perhaps I should have skipped this one at least for now during the pandemic. But, it was an interesting and good read.

This is in the style of World War Z. A series of anthology stories set progressively through a mysterious pandemic that causes everyone to not be able to sleep. Each story is how someone or some group deals with the situation. Some helping others, taking advantage of the situation, trying to get home, trying to find a cure, committing atrocities, loosing their mind slowly or quickly, finding ways to keep he walls of civilization up, trying to rebuild, trying to maintain themselves and their friends through the bad times.

A trend in these stories is something that was known pre pandemic but perhaps not loudly: guns and ammo aren’t your most critical supplies when things get bad, it is a community/friends/neighbors who can lean on you and you can lean on.

Some of the stories are dark, terribly dark. In some stories people die. Some of them feature details of the worst of people. Some have people who do terrible things so that some survive or might survive. There are also some that go into the best of people.

Remember to take care of one another out there.… (altro)

When I read a story like this I want to have a sense of dread. I think back to reading "On The Beach" many years ago. It felt so real.

This is sort of like a zombie apocalypse story without the zombies. In style it reminded me of "World War Z", the book, not the terrible movie. Again without zombies. Who needs zombies when everyone has been awake for weeks.

The oral history of The Longest Day, a time (of undetermined length) when nobody on earth could fall asleep. Stories of mostly ordinary people from around the world and how they coped. If you can accept the premise, then you have to accept that perhaps something like this could occur without warning and that in the aftermath, we might never know what it was.

The first stories pretty much telegraphs ultimate survival of the human race, but that's OK. The book is called an "oral history". That means somebody must have been around to tell the stories to somebody who was collecting them

Most of the stories were very personal which is where the sense of dread comes in. Could I imagine myself in this situation? Many of the stories gave me that sense of dread I'd feel if it was really happening.

Although I enjoyed the book very much I didn't give it a 5 because the story telling was a bit uneven. For example, I didn't buy the story of the gamers, or the friends who just happened to decide to stay awake as an adventure the very night the Insomnia Plague struck.… (altro)