zoomaru

Do you read much? I read most nights before I pass out at 10:30. I read a lot of crappy vampire books and really sad childhood memoir books and then I’ll grab me some of them thar lit-ur-a-tur, too. My current book is of the lit-ur-a-tur variety. And it’s so tasty and divine I can barely stand it. I’ve read Cormac McCarthy’s “All the Pretty Horses” and thought, alright, he’s a writer of westerns, albeit spare and beautiful, perfectly phrased westerns. But that would be putting him into a tiny little pocket in which he does not deserve to be.

You’ve really got to check out “The Road”. I picked it up after a recommendation by my OTHER steady source of lit-ur-a-tur, Entertainment Weekly (oh how I love your slim little booklets that slide through my mail slot like the regular drip drip drip of a morphine line!). I’m only 50 pages into it and I just marvel at this guy’s command of the language. Each line has so much subtext and subtlety. And it’s not like he’s all impressed with his command of vocabulary, because he doesn’t get all jiggy on the vohizzle or anything.

This story, you slowly learn, is set after an apocalyptic event of some sort, but he doesn’t say it all bold and scary or wordily like Stephen King might. This is SO not a disaster or sci-fi post-apocalypse book. He only slowly unfurls the hints and allusions to the fact that some really bad shit went down. There is a father and son who are traveling by foot, going south, and their tender relationship is so carefully drawn on the page, that I cared immensely about them from the start. I hope nothing bad happens to them. That would totally bum me out.

I guess I should finish the book before reviewing it, but really it’s so stellar this soon into the thing, that I can’t help raving! Read any good books lately? This one surely won’t last forever! Tell me in the comments!