Sleep Donation

When I was reading the story of Sleep Donation, certain things scared me. Besides the possibility of an incurable insomnia what really frightened me was how close things that were happening in the book were so relevant and relatable to what was happening now. Thinking about this book in context to current events it what truly made this book frightening.
Currently we have a medical crisis starting to arise, Ebola, and in this work of fiction the mass populations reaction was almost exactly what we've been seeing here in nonfiction. We have some people on the verge of mass hysteria, for no apparent reason, people are scared and terrified even that out of no where they have contracted this terrible virus. In Sleep Donation there was the nightmare scare of Donor Y, it became an epidemic causing mass panic to where people, who would die if they didn't sleep, would no longer accept donated sleep. All of the volunteers stopped because they were afraid of getting infected as well, and possible people who were at one point willing to donate where no longer even entertaining the notion because they claimed they had nightmares as well. All of this is almost exactly what's happening now in reaction to the current problem we are faced with. People, who are no where near or could not have been exposed to, believe they are infected because they feel under the weather. They create mass panic because it is contagious, though no one bothers to look up in what way it is contagious.      
Another feature of the story that matched with what is happening in the real world today is the media. The only thing I could think about while reading how the media in the story was reacting in a time of crisis what that that is exactly what is happening now with the virus. The media does not report fact but fiction, they do not have peace of mind in mind when they blow whatever has happened completely out of proportion. The reactions that is causes is almost as catastrophic as whatever is actually plaguing us. They cause so much damage that the people who are actually trying to do good and solve the problem no longer can because of all the misinformation people have received. The media in the book and here keep giving out wrong information, which either scares people or makes them angry at government officials that have no power over these situations. Putting this story in context with what is happening currently makes this story a bit to close to home and makes it a lot more frightening than I think was originally intended.

Book of the dead

Surprisingly enough I did relate to the book of the dead, somewhat. Possibly one of the most relatable things in the story was they way she had built up her father in her mind, then finding out that he was not the man she had always thought he was. I believe it happened the same way for me as it did for the narrator in this story, as you get older the more you start to realize, or the more things are revealed to you, that the way we have always seen someone was through almost rose colored glasses. The more that comes to light the more we have to deal with the fact that our reality was never really accurate for begin with, making us reevaluate certain times in our lives.  

Another relation was the artistic aspect of it, how she was trying to get her art to sell, and how the cracks were not planned but happened, for the vast majority of students at an art school accidents are literally just waiting to happen, more often then not they happen in our artwork. Most of the time they are not 'happy accident's' as Bob Ross would have us believe, but they are terrible horrible out of our control 'photo shop crashed the day before my final and I need to start all over again' catasphories. THough sometimes there are rare cases were things go wrong, but like in the book makes our artwork look better than expected and still somehow manages to go with what we were originally intending to do with the piece.  

Another relatable thing in the story was how that one story about her father kept coming back to her, she obsessed over it really, almost seemed to drive her crazy. Lot's of times we were told stories as kids that we don't fully understand but we still wonder about, that we think about. And then somehow after years, without anyone bringing it up you think about it again and now you have more knowledge so things make a little bit more sense, things in the story reveal itself. But you still wander about what actually happened but the person isn't there to ask anymore so you just have to accept it even though you mid comes up with a hundered different theories about what could have happened and you will never have true peace because you will never actually know what happened.