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Earlier this week I finished Cormac McCarthy’s The Road.  I’m still digesting it.  This book was really interesting, but at the same time very difficult to read for me.  Without spoiling anything, a father and son are traveling along ‘the road’ in a post-nuclear apocalypse earth.

When it comes to human nature, I don’t think I’ve read anyone who portrays it as McCarthy does, and I think I hate him for it.  On the one hand, he’s very dark, and its disgusting the way that some of the people in his world (and not just this book, but the same could be said for No Country For Old Men) behave and those characters very nature.  What I hate is that the way these characters behave is completely believable.  I don’t want to believe that humans can kill other humans without a shred of remorse, and devour their flesh without a thought.

But really, in the world this book is set in, our world, after a nuclear war, is completely and scarily believable.  And I hate it.  But I also don’t feel like there is much I could do to stop it, outside of being “one of the good guys.”  Though that’s not enough, it would have to do.  I’m still struggling with some of the stuff in this book, and part of me wishes I never laid eyes on it.  Another part of me is glad that now I’m considering and thinking about things in a new light.  But I don’t think I like that new light.  When I put the book down for the final time I wanted to cut myself.  Something to feel human, because I was left feeling so cold after reading the book.

Of course I didn’t do that.  But it made me consider if I would really want to be a survivor if there was a nuclear war or other event that literally scorched every living thing from the earth.  Would anyone want to live in that world?  Probably not, but we’d probably all at least try to go on living, until it was too much for us to bear, then we’d just hope for a quick death.

Now that you all also want to kill yourselves, I’ll move on to the next book.  I was recommended <em>count down - the race for beautiful solutions at the International Mathematical Olympiad</em> by Steve Olson.  Chris had to read this book for her masters class and so far it has been up and down for me.  Yesterday I got bored with it at lunch, but then on my way home from work, missed my train stop because I was nose down in it and paying no attention to my surroundings.

Anyway, thats all for now, I’m halfway there, and its not even June.

25 down, 25 to go.