The Measure by Nikki Erlick

I had taken this book out as an audiobook on Hoopla in advance of a trip to the Galapagos, where I was going to spend much of a 2 weeks period without cellular connections, and didn’t get very far into it. Then within a month of getting home I had a detached retina and was instructed to lie of my left side and keep my eyes closed to prevent further progression in the 24 hour time period between diagnosis and surgery, so I rechecked it out to help be compliant with that mandate. The hook here is that on one day world wide everyone aged 22 and older receives a box with a string inside that tells you exactly how long your life will be. While no one gets out of here alive, we are all on a course with death throughout our lives, but we don’t know the when of it—this takes all the guess work out of it. The book has lots of scenarios within to help the reader process how they themselves might respond—there is a couple who have widely divergent string lengths who stay together and another that breaks up. There are people who use the knowledge to live for today and others who are so anxious they cannot enjoy the time that they have. There are people who have potentially fatal illnesses who have long strings, so what the quality of the life is remains unknown, but that there is quantity of life remaining. It is serious stuff dealt with in a lighter and enjoyable way.