I’ve been a reading slump for a few months now mainly because I felt like I’ve been reading too many non fiction books.

I usually set a reading goal for myself every year. I definitely aim high. But this year I’m not confident in getting to that goal. I’m about 40% there with only about 20% of the year left. That means I’d have to finish a book every 1.5 weeks. Seems daunting.

I know I could reach that goal reading a whole bunch of fluff that are easy to get through, but for me – reading is a way to knowledge. So even my fiction books have to teach and inspire me in some way.

So, atlas …I persist.

I do want to share this amazing fiction book I recently read. (I borrowed my book from Vaughan Public Library system because I love libraries (and sustainability).
*needs a totebag with that phrase on it*)

Upgrade by Blake Crouch is about a near dystopian future where science has taken on a twisted yet believable turn “DNA editing”. The story weaves between a son (who works for a FBI like agency looking to prevent corrupted gene editing), his sister and his mother (a science genius pushing the boundaries with hopes of saving the earth). There is a lot of scientific jargon (naming of genes etc) with enough depth to help me understand the characters knowledge but also confusing at times (I glossed over that). Blake Crouch is an author that can create drama, intrigue and action to capture the reader’s attention and also help the reader read faster (lol if that makes sense). Since I don’t want to give away any spoilers, I’ll end off here with saying I give this a 5/5 ⭐️

And if you need any further inclination, here are some of the quotes I annotated! Enjoy!

• We were on the outskirts of the city doing 120mph. The dual electric motors were almost silent.

• Parts of New York City and most of Miami were underwater, and an island of plastic the size of Iceland was floating in the Indian Ocean.

• But it wasn’t just humans who’d been affected. There were no more northern white rhinos or South China tigers. The red wolves were gone, along with countless other species.  There were no more glaciers in Glacier National Park.
  
• We had gotten so much right. And too much wrong. The future was here, and it was a fucking mess.

• I had extraordinary dreams and an ordinary mind.

• I wanted to actually do something, you know? It’s the difference between designing a house and building the thing.

• Memories were coming back to me, and not just of every book I’d ever read. Random moments of insignificance. Pivotal events that had shaped my life. From a month ago. From a decade ago. From my childhood. It was an eerie sensation. As if someone were brooming out the dark corners of my mind. Wiping off the cobwebs. Repairing frayed connections.

• “So you’re saying people are too stupid?” “Not just that,” Miriam said. “It’s denial. Selfishness. Magical thinking. We are not rational beings. We seek comfort rather than a clear-eyed stare into reality. We consume and preen and convince ourselves that if we keep our heads in the sand, the monsters will just go away. Simply put, we refuse to help ourselves as a species. We refuse to do what must be done. Every danger we face links ultimately back to this failing.”

• I’d felt it that night and I felt it on this one-being with Kara quenched some evolutionary thirst. A primal, genetic need to belong to a tribe.

• We were a bunch of primates who had gotten together and, against all odds, built a wondrous civilization. But paradoxically-tragically-our creation’s complexity had now far outstripped our brains’ ability to manage it.

• While I waited for my food, I pulled out a small, leather-bound journal I always carried with me, flipped to the next blank page, and started a new letter.

• You’re working off a flawed assumption. Higher intelligence doesn’t make you less greedy or self-centered or evil. It doesn’t necessarily make you a good person.

• Right and wrong are constructs born of human sentiment.

• Nothing but stories we’ve made up and assigned meaning to. They don’t correspond to any objective reality. The only thing real is survival.

• Maybe compassion and empathy are just squishy emotions. Illusions created by our mirror neuons. But does it really matter where they come from? They make us human. They might even be what make us worth saving.
  
• And I was struck, again, as an outside observer, by how much the members of our species needed one another. All these people out in the cold rain. To laugh and drink. To talk about nothing. It was almost as if that need for connection and touch was our … their … lifeblood.

• “Consider this. For a time, Kara and I were the only upgraded humans on this planet. And what did we do? Immediately tried to kill each other over differences in belief. You got the upgrade and decided to help Kara release a virus that will lead to mass suffering and death. Doesn’t feel like intelligence itself is the answer. It terrifies me to think of a world where we have all the same problems, a billion less friends, and everyone thinks they’re smart enough to be infallible.”

• “So you’d rather have no world at all?” “That’s a false binary. We are in trouble, but that doesn’t mean this is the only solution. Rejecting something that involves killing a billion people isn’t the same thing as sticking my head in the sand while the world burns.”

• “You can’t kill humanity to save humanity. Human beings are not a means to an end.”

• The temptation to swim over was strong. Barter for break-fast. See about getting a boat. But the commotion at 140 Broadway last night must’ve sounded like Armageddon. Anyone in the vicinity would have heard it, and me stumbling into their midst would only raise an alarm. So I settled for watching them from a distance-this forgotten fragment of humanity making a life together in the most inhospitable of places.

• They seemed truly happy, and it made me happy to watch them—a thousand small kindnesses among people who had nothing to give.

• We were a monstrous, thoughtful, selfish, sensitive, fearful, ambitious, loving, hateful, hopeful species. We contained within us the potential for great evil, but also for great good. And we were capable of so much more than this.