Read It! The Road by Cormac McCarthy

I am adding a new feature to this blog called "Read It!" for you, my 3 or 4 faithful readers. I am a multidimensional person who not only watches TV, but also loves reading. Lately I have been reading a lot of that nerdy sci-fi fantasy stuff, which I won't recommend to the general population. (Even though there is a lot of amazing stuff out there. When you are ready to ride down the nerd slide, let me know.) But I came across a lovely title that I want to share with you.

As a point of cultural reference, the title of this feature comes from my personal past. One day I was reading through a journal that I had kept for about three weeks when I was in my early teens. One entry I had decided to list all of my "favorites" since my life was too uninteresting to write about at the time. Under "Favorite Book" I had written: "Tennis Shoes Among the Nephites by Chris Heimerdinger. READ IT!" I am not sure who I was admonishing to read it - was it future me? Or my posterity? I'm not sure. And I hope this recommendation holds a little more weight than that.

I am here to recommend The Road by Cormac McCarthy. Sure, I know, Oprah already recommended it. And sure I know, the people at Pulitzer already recommended it. But don't you care more about my opinion? I thought so.

The Road is basically the story of a man and his son. They are heading south down the road in some sort of post-apocalyptic world where there is very little food and very few survivors. They are trying to get to a warmer climate so they can survive the winter, and avoid other travelers, who will more than likely kill them to get their supplies.

It is incredibly moving and sad and awful and powerful, all at once. There were nights that I was reading it that I wanted to stay up and finish it just so it would be OVER so I could stop worrying about the man and his son. Did you see the movie Children of Men? Didn't you just want it to end so that you could have peace in your heart again? That is how I felt about this book. It was so gut-wrenchingly sad to read about a father trying to provide a life for his son in a world where your survival is at stake every day.

I think it was especially poignant because I have sons of my own. But I think anyone who is human would be touched by this story. And it is written in sparse, beautiful prose. So sparse that there are no apostrophes or quotation marks. What's up with that McCarthy? I remember that from All the Pretty Horses but why is anyone too cool for punctuation? Maybe all of the above the line punctuation marks were destroyed in the bomb blast...Who knows.

So I give this book a hearty recommendation. It is short and you will get through it in a couple of days, and you will love it. Is it as good as Heimerdinger's Opus Tennis Shoes Among the Nephites? I cannot promise that. But still, READ IT!!!