The Things that Keep Us Here

The Things That keep us here by Carla Buckley.

Mum bought this book and loant it to me. (so I can't share it with anyone :( )

Mum was reading it while we had the floods and evacuation messages so she found it a bit ironic at the time.
I read it in 2 days (I would have read it all at once but these kids keep expecting me to feed them!)

So you can read about it here - http://www.carlabuckley.com/books.php

It's about a family trying to survive during an Avian Flu Pandemic.
I couldn't put it down and it really made me think about how unprepared we all are for any major disasters, be they flu or floods.
So many things fell apart so fast, if everyone is sick, there's no one to deliver milk or operate petrol stations or keep the power running etc.

Because of the floods here it only took 1 day of no normal deliveries for the stores here to run low on milk, and 2-3 days for there to be no vegetables,fruit, bread or milk. Our well built society falls apart pretty damn fast.

I did wish the chapters had "day 13" etc as it was hard to follow the time line and I did wonder how they had frozen vegetables and a loaf of bread after so long with out power.

I was sad when I got to the end of the book as I really liked the characters and would have been happier if the book had been a bit longer. It reminded me slightly of "The Stand" but possibly only because of the flu connection (and because The Stand is one of my fav books ever)

And here's a link with what you should stock your pantry with (just in case)-

http://www.pantrylist.com.au/pantry/dloads/PantryList.pdf