ISBN: 9798503950120
Amazon ID: B01C2GFP5Y
Oh dear me, where do I start?
This book is bad in so many ways.
I'm going to completely overlook the ridiculous implausibility of someone having a disorder which means he falls asleep at 4:00am every day, in whatever the local timezone happens to be, and remains asleep for 23 hours.
The first bad thing about this book is how American-focused it is in terms of things you won't understand if you're not American, or familiar with various aspects of American life (or maybe the author's life?):
Why does the author feel the need to either use, or explain the meaning of, the word sternocleidomastoid? Okay, it's a perfectly correct word for the muscle being referred to, but either people know it already (so it doesn't need explaining), or they don't (in which case don't be distracting).
Some aspects of the grammar are just totally confusing, and I don't know whether this is standard American, or if the author just didn't read his own book. Some examples:
Some mistakes are clearly not Americanisms, just bad writing:
At one point a good deal of noise is being made in an apartment in the middle of the night, and the downstairs neighbours start banging on the walls. Eh? I would be banging on the ceiling if I lived downstairs from the disturbance.
Someone is lost / stranded at the side of a river which has frequent sandy banks, and decides to write a message in the sand so that any rescue aircraft can see it. He makes a point of sharpening a stick in order to write the message. Surely this makes the lines thinner, and therefore more difficult to see from the air, than using a blunt stick?
He later writes a second message comprising thirteen words. Either this is an enormous stretch of sand at the side of the river, or this won't be readable from more than 50 feet in the air.
The stories pretty soon involve a cat (named Lassie, of course?) and a dog - the things they are allowed / given to eat are absolutely atrocious. Anyone who treats animals like this should be fed worms, plankton and grass to see how they get on with a diet that's perfectly okay for some species, but not ideal for humans.
The animals are allowed to get away with extremely destructive behaviour, both in the homes where they live and in other premises when they visit (for no adequately explained reason).
The central character also has conversations with his cat. Now, I don't mind people talking to animals, but this book is written in such a way that entire conversations take place where one side is simply saying "Meow" every time, and the other side is claiming to understand complex concepts from this.
Oh, and the cat also apparently laughs, and cries (as in, sad tears, not crying out in distress).
The main character is in his late twenties, and "shaved with an electric razor in the shower every couple [of] days". I think I'm either impressed that the razor still works, or that the character is still alive.
The two biggest things I simply cannot cope with about this book, though, are that the central character's birthday is inconsistent (and not for any reason to do with the narrative), as is the spelling of the name of the president of the US (who is a character in the story, therefore his name comes up several times, and the spelling changes during the book).
In chapter two of book four, the central character states that he was born on the 12th of December 1978.
In chapter six of the same book, his birth certificate (which he claims to be familiar with) shows he was born on the 20th of March 1978.
The president starts out being Connor Sullivan and ends up being Conner Sullivan.
I can easily forgive any proofreader who was asked to go through this for abandoning the job early on.
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