Literature Review

I finished Cormac McCarthy's The Road on the subway on the way home today. Although it only took me a couple of days to read it, it was really painful. It's one of the saddest, most hopeless stories I've ever read.

There's been some awful catastrophe that has burned everything to the ground. All plants are dead, all animals are dead. The vast majority of people are dead, and the only ones left are roaming the countryside in bands of cannibals.

A few years after this catastrophe is when this story takes place. A man, known only as Papa, and his young son, who remains nameless, are traveling southwards on a road through a desolate landscape covered in ash and grey snow. They don't know what they'll find when they reach the coast. Always hungry, they search abandoned buildings for food at the risk of getting caught by "the bad guys" and killed to be eaten. The only food that exists does so in canned form. All the water is full of ash and soot, a slow moving sludge.

While reading this book, it becomes quickly apparent that there is no happy ending in sight. The reader realizes that the father is dying, and the young boy will soon be on his own in this hostile landscape, which, since he was born after the catastrophe, is the only world he knows. Nevertheless, the boy shows remarkable empathy and caution.

Yes, I'd recommend this book. It was fabulous. But not as a pick-me-up. If you're clinically depressed, make sure you're current on your medications before venturing into this story.

Post-Apocalyptic Dystopia

I am currently reading Cormac McCarthy's The Road (review to follow as soon as I've finished), not because I enjoy Pulitzer Prize winning books, but because one of my absolute favorite genres of books is post-apocalyptic/dystopian society.





Because, throughout my reading career, I've had much difficulty finding my next post-apocalyptic fix, I've compiled a list of my favorite pieces within the genre, accompanied by a very brief synopsis.





The Road: Civilization is gone, all fluara and fauna are dead, and the majority of the remaining humans have resorted to cannibalism. A man and his young son travel through a dead world in a desperate attempt to survive. (Genre: Post-apocalyptic)


I Who Have Never Known Men: Forty women are caged in a bunker, watched over by armed guards. None of the women know one another, and the guards never speak. None of them remember how they came to be there, nor why they're being incarcerated. Then, one day, the guards disappear, and they're able to escape, only to find that they've entered a completely unfamiliar landscape. (Genre: Post-Apocalyptic) This book is in my top 5 favorites.

Oryx and Crake: A small tribe of genetically engineered humans living in a world where all the normal people have died off. (Genre: Post-apocalyptic)

The Giver: This book basically falls into the same category that Brave New World lives in. A young boy is assigned to carry the memories of a people no longer willing to experience anything unpleasant, and the burden leads him to rebel. (Genre: Utopian)

Uglies: A young-adult series set in a world where people are physically altered when they come of age and are made "pretty". This book examines what "pretty" really is, and what it actually means. (Genre: Utopian)

Alas, Babylon: We follow the survival of a group of people after America has been attacked by nuclear weapons. (Genre: Post-apocalyptic)

Anthem: In this book, there is no longer any such thing as the personal pronoun. The characters actually speak exactly like the Borg. This is the story of one person becoming an individual. (Genre: Utopian)

A Canticle for Leibowitz: This book is about post-apocalyptic society trying to reclaim civilization. Pretty cool for people into archeology and exploring abandoned buildings. (Genre: post-apocalyptic)

I Am Legend: I'm not going to bother summarizing this, since it was out in theaters so recently. I will, however, say that the book far, far outshines the movie in every possible way. (Genre: Post-apocalyptic?)

**I am aware that I did not include any dystopian titles on this list. I can give honorable mention to 1984, which is dystopian, but, honestly, I thought that book was too cumbersome a read.