Well, after the big long post about how my reading patterns have changed I just completed two interesting adult novels. Not adult meaning erotica, just regular adult literature. Saturday by Ian McEwan and The Road by Cormac McCarthy.
As the title implies, Saturday is a book that focuses on one day in a man's life. Family, career, relationships, etc. are explored as the day progresses. An event in the morning has unexpected consequences later in the day. The foreshadowing makes it a bit obvious but the solution, or maybe rather the resolution, that follows is pleasantly literary. Reading this book may make you want to memorize a noteworthy poem to have readily available just in case.
The Road is a quick, unsettling read about a man and his son traveling on the road after some event, presumably nuclear as there is a continuous falling of ash covering everything and bodies are burned into the pavement along some stretches of road. There are evil, roving gangs, periods of starvation, an acceptance and rejection of death, and an enduring love between them. As one of my friends mentioned when she finished the book, when an author takes what is basically a blank slate (imagine the world after a nuclear world war - no living trees, no green grass, everything shrouded in gray) and writes anything, that anything becomes wondrous. It could be a device as I hear the author has at least one other book that has a similar setting, but it used well. If someone has ideas on why the author chose to leave apostrophes out of words like "cant" and "havent" and "dont", I'd love to hear them. I have my own theory but I'd like to know what others think.
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Okay, so not to open up a can of worms, but I'm reading The Road too. It's the first book I've actually bought and paid for (with the intention of reading it all) in more than a year. And no, Oprah didn't have anything to do with dictating my intentions. I had downloaded the audiobook a few months ago, but McCarthy's style does not lend itself to audio performance. His lyricism demands closer inspection, it would seem.
So far, I'm no more than 50 pages in, and I've noticed that McCarthy's style is sort of hypnotic, and almost mind-numbing. I can't read 20 pages before I start falling asleep. His language is so poetic and ethereal. His lack of punctuation sort of adds to that. I think his minimalistic approach is pretty interesting, sort of like Chinese watercolor, a few brief strokes that say so much.
I'm a little put off by the fact that this topic (Post Apocalytic) has been breached a number of times by sci-fi writers, but no one has really gotten the credit that McCarthy has, just because of his literary pedigree. In any event, I look forward to reading more. I'm also interested in a book called Hollywood Station, but can't remember the author's name offhand.
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