I gave this the one hour rule - despite being a wonderfully diverse book, the writing style was not for me and perhaps needs some maturing in writing style- it feels like some editing may be needed. I tend to enjoy books more that show rather than tell, and at times it felt a little bit too much pushing of good political ideas (that I do agree with) instead of subtly integrating them for maximum impact.

I listened to the audiobook version of this book.

I decided to stop reading around halfway through, I have had this on my list for a while and was quite aware it is very academic in nature, which can often run a little dry. 

I initially found the first part of the book to be quite interesting, as many things were touched upon including the pansy period which I myself had been researching recently. However the first issue I ran into was that people were beginning to be dead named. (x name, born as Y name). Pronouns also got messy when describing their stories. 

This is an excellent academic record of queer history, and something that definitely should exist to prevent further loss of queer history, but I think there is probably a question here of "do we need to mention someone's birth name, in order to make sure we can continue to locate them in historical records?"


the beauty of queer history (to me at least) is the verbal stories passed between us, some outrageous tales that become Chinese whispers. Surely it's better to refer someone by the names they chose, and the stories they chose to tell? 

On this note, there was a lot of myth busting, and lines like "many people thought x, but this wasn't true". Who has the right to expel queer myths? I feel a focus on the many stories, over the "actual facts" read into a far more interesting look at queer history (and feel way less mansplainy when listened to over audiobook) 


After the initial excitement around this book, and pushing back these issues discussed, I began to feel the book itself was not well structured and at times felt very scattered, which was when I decided to dnf. Very sad, but I think the author did not have a relevant enough background to discuss all kinds of people and topics in a way that worked, and this would have worked better as a collaborative effort with other researchers from these backgrounds. 

Nice book to flick through while on holiday in Penzance 😊

I read 50 pages of this back in 2018.. I think it may be best to retire this from the list and start it again someday 😂 I liked the little bit that I read though! 

1 🌟

No one liked this one 😂

Struggling to follow the story via audio book, I'll return to this at some point  but definitely liked the initial vibe of what was going on! 💕

This book wins the record for the highest percentage read before I put it to rest. Woo. 

91 percent in, I gave up the ghost. This has been an up and down read, the positive parts being excellent. I have learned so much about sleep science, which has reconsolidated and improved lessons learned during my psychology degree. This book has convinced me fully of the importance of sleep and has convinced me it is something I really need to work on within my own life. How to do that however, is still a question that needs answering elsewhere. 

Why I dnf'd - two things

1) How do we have better sleep? 

The author talks of cutting age techniques, but in describing who lack of sleep affects most (people in short who are heaviest affected by the plight of capitalism) he touches on societal causes but not the importance of dismantling of capitalism as a solution. In fact, many solutions are probably not accessible to the groups he is describing as most in need of them.

2) Neurodiversity and sleep

There was a section mid way where the author talked about how Neurodiversity was impacted by sleep. He took care to not outright say lack of sleep caused adhd and autism, but pointed out that some studies suggested as such. 
91% in, I hear him refer to adhd as a rising epidemic. I honestly don't care for what is next, what devil's advocate reasonings he may have for this not actually being the case. Others likely could read this and add further fuel to the difficulties neurodiverse people are having to be heard right now. He is clearly not an expert on Neurodiversity and it showed. 

Oh I'll add a third:
Weird use of accents when talking as people from other countries left a weird taste in my mouth as well. 


Tldr:; I feel a teetering around topics of things he wishes to say but others would find too controversial (adhd probably caused by sleep deprivation), or doesn't want to (capitalism is the problem). Learned a lot but have very few answers due to the issue being so systemic (which he refuses to acknowledge) 

If I met this author in life, I feel we would not get along, despite his clear passion in the subject and some very intriguing information that he presents. 

Honestly, I was really enjoying this. 

But some things are not sitting right with me ever since I googled Yeonmi and learned more about her new book today. It has said more about what growing up in North Korea can do to a person than this book ever could. (Not invalidating any real experiences she might have shared of course).

I highly suspect that the same person who wrote the blurb for book 2 wrote the foreword. I'll leave it at that for now.