A literary note
I can highly recommend Jose Saramago’s novel Blindness, about an unexplained apocalyptic event that brings out the absolute worst in human nature, and I can equally highly recommend Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, about ditto, but I cannot recommend reading them both in quick succession, as I have now done. Among other things, I am now obsessing about hoarding food.
Thank you.
October 14th, 2008 at 2:13 pm
I would not recommend listening to The Road on an 8 hour overnight drive to the parents house for Thanksgiving through back country roads and isolated farm land. Does not set quite the right mood when you arrive. Most other times of the year, a really great book.
October 14th, 2008 at 6:05 pm
Eek. Watch it. Better diversify your reading list or you’ll convert the pool into a fallout shelter and start stocking up on armaments of dubious legality.
October 14th, 2008 at 7:21 pm
I’ve been obsessed with hoarding food since the original Bush-Paulson Welfare for Wall Street Plan was first announced.
October 17th, 2008 at 10:34 am
We also listened to The Road on a road trip, which nearly made my husband swear off audio books altogether (or at least my choices), due to its sad, sad aftertaste.
Another problem with hearing the book was that I was not able to see how he spelled “crozzled” (as in the “crozzled hearts” in the bodies of nuked commuters), a word he used that I really wanted to look up to see if he invented it. Or if I just misheard it. Either way, it’s an awesome word, and I’m keeping it.
October 20th, 2008 at 4:13 pm
Oh noooo. That’s a reeeally bad idea. I haven’t read Blindness (on my list), but I am in deep worship of The Road, and have been since I picked up my copy on the day it was published. I keep re-reading it periodically, which is why I have such an interesting canned food collection right now, and a bunch of 3-liter Poland Spring jugs hiding in my tiny Manhattan closets. But hey: if some kind of bird flu strikes New York, I’ll have everything from anchovies to mangoes to tied me over.