I just finished a book called “The Road” by Cormac McCarthy. I can easily say that it was the most disturbing, moving, and amazing book I have read in a long, long time. I finished it last night and it had me staring at the ceiling for an hour it had (has) a grip on me I have never experienced reading a book (I am a moderate to heavy reader of fiction).
I was curious if anyone else has read it and what you thought. If you haven’t read it, and you want to read a book that will challenge your mind and soul…I highly recommend it.
Hmmmm…I knew nothing about this book before I read it. I got it from my brother for my birthday. I purposely didn’t look up anything about it until now. Hadn’t heard of the the author,etc. Apparently I am not alone in my thoughts on this book.
On April 16, 2007, the novel was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction
On March 28, 2007, the selection of The Road as the next novel in Oprah Winfrey’s Book Club was announced
“A few weeks ago I read what I believe is the most important environmental book ever written. It is not Silent Spring, Small Is Beautiful or even Walden. It contains no graphs, no tables, no facts, figures, warnings, predictions or even arguments. Nor does it carry a single dreary sentence, which, sadly, distinguishes it from most environmental literature. It is a novel, first published a year ago, and it will change the way you see the world.”
Critics have deemed it “heartbreaking,” “haunting,” and "emotionally shattering.
I finished reading it a couple months ago and all I can say is that it is truly remarkable piece of literature. I do think frequently about certain parts of that novel since they are relatively disturbing.
I believe that it is a novel which makes us think on certain priorities and values we tend to lack of : the vision of McCarthy seems so far from our daily reality but at the same time this vision is not that improbable when one looks at what is happening globally with our planet and what we may be heading to. Without going too much in the details it really made me think on a lot of aspects of life in general.
All I can say is that I experienced too finishing the book and just staring at the walls for a long time.
By the way, it’s the same guy who wrote “no country for old men’
The Road really of haunted me for a few weeks. The “conversations” between the father and son felt so immense…like you could feel the cold somehow and their sense of emptiness. Very powerful book.
No Country for Old Men was very interesting. The way Cormac McCarthy uses dialog to build his characters in both books is so subtle and elegant. Haven’t read All the Pretty Horses.
I heard there’s a movie of The Road in the works. Shudder
Be aware…there are definitely spoilers in the article. For anyone following here that hasn’t read the book…don’t search for it. Don’t read about it on Wikipedia, don’t learn anything more than you have read here. Just read it. There are a LOT of spoilers around and trust me, you want this book to be pure when you read it.
Viggo Mortensen is going to be “The Man” and Robert Duval is playing Ely. “The boy” is an “unknown” from Austrailia. Charlize Theron is playing “the wife”.
I was hoping that might be an outcome of posting about “The Road”.
One of my most recent reads that had an affect on me was “Pattern Recognition” by William Gibson. Gibson strayed away from the sharp edged Cyberpunk style he penned but I found it to be his best work yet. Actually quite relevant to Design. I picked up Spook Country by Gibson and just started it. But so far I am finding it a hard read due to the significantly different pace of the prose compared to McCarthy.