Our last book club book of the year is a memoir - written by a man who is slowly going blind from an eye disease called retinitis pigmentosa (RP). A few online creators also have this condition, including influencer Molly Burke and author/illustrator Paul Castle. So, I had some familiarity with RP before reading. What makes this memoir different is that Leland is a seasoned reporter and podcaster, so his historical research and summarizing is impeccable.
Leland discovered he had RP in his teens, when he began to experience nightblindness. He knew that he would eventually lose his vision, but that RP was a slow progressing disease. So, he lived his young adult life fairly normally, but losing some vision each year. Currently, Leland has 20 degrees of vision looking forward, and two small slivers of peripheral vision on each side. This helps him navigate the world with some accommodations.
Since Leland is so skillfully technical, those parts of the book were well-written, but sometimes impersonal. Though Leland wrote about his and his family's feelings about his condition some, I was hoping for more emotion out of a memoir. Still, I really enjoyed this read, and I learned a lot about blindness and the history of disability activism. I absolutely recommend it.
The Country of the Blind: A Memoir at the End of Sight by Andrew Leland
3/5 stars - an engaging and world-opening memoir about the lives of the blind
I hope that you are completely booked!
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