"The Road"

I have read more of the road and I think this may become one of my favorite books. I am somewhat near the end of the novel and the father and son have just ran into another human. This is the first human contact they have had in a long time. They find an old man walking on the road and the young boy begs his father to help the man, and the father reluctantly follows. Eventually, however, the father tells the son that they cannot help the savage. I think that this is a very questionable decision and reveals a lot about human nature. If you were to imagine yourself in the same situation as this father and son find themselves, would you help a weak, old man, who may be the only other survivor on earth? Or would you leave him on the side of the road, because it is not worth wasting you limited supplies on him? I do understand that the old man is too weak to continue on the journey, but does that mean it is okay to leave him on the side of the road to die? The father really has the main priority in mind which is living, and he will go through any measure, even if it causes disappointment for his son, to keep them alive. It is a very interesting example of human nature and when food, shelter and supplies are scarce, every man is for his own and there is survival only for the fittest. The novel gets even more gripping as it progresses, and I am interested to read in detail about the epic disaster that led the father and son to live in this state: being deserted, and living in destruction.

The Road

I have just started "The Road" by Cormac McCarthy and im totally loving it. I must say, its a rather depressing book, but everything about it draws me in. McCarthy's writing style is especially interesting to me: her constant use of short/simple sentences, not using quotation marks during dialogs, never referring to the characters by their actual names.... She doesn't over complicate the plot by trying to make her writing sound "fancy". To me, it sounds very real and she captured a good tone/voice for the book.

For about half the book, the story is told of a father and young son who, after surviving a fatal, world-wide disaster, travel for years to find survivors like themselves. Although they face a constant cycle of traveling, hiding from the "bad guys" (they young boy refers the cannibals who have resorted to eating humans as this), and searching for food, the book never seems to get repetitive. Their struggle is described night by night in the book, and it somehow seems interesting every time I read their experience, even if it is very similar to what was described a few pages before that. The author has a great way of revealing all the details to give a vivid, and emotionally stimulating picture in my mind. Yet, she also doesn't give away all the details, leaving room for suspense and predictions of my own. I still have so many questions: What exactly was this epic disaster that left them to be two of the few people actually remaining? Will they ever reach a place where survivors like them can live? I'm totally loving the book! I am enjoying and am interested by McCarthy's writing style in this novel (it's hard to describe, so I really suggest this book so you can get an idea of what I'm talking about). Can't wait to keep reading!

The Sublte Knife: end

It has been a few weeks since I last blogged about this book and I have just finished it. I was very interested by many of the topics mentioned in the book. But, I must say that it was a bit hard for me to understand what was going on at some times since this is the second book in "His Dark Materials" collection and I didn't read the first book in the series. Also, I have not read a fantasy book on my own involving other magical realms in a while. This was actually one of the main reasons I picked up the book. Usually when we read fantasy in class (like the epic poem, The Inferno), we analyze many of the events that occur. As I read this book on my own, I tried to visualize it to help my understanding. Now that I am finished with it, I am extremely happy I read this book not only because it was a genre that I'm a bit uncomfortable with, but because it helped expand my creativity and out-of-the-box imagination.
There was a lot of abstract thinking, such as imagining the doorways between Ci’gazze and other universes. But, I was also interested in topics that relate to real life. Part of the plot in this novel is that a girl named Lina ventures out to another world to learn about this mysterious "dark matter". This was my favorite part of the plot because we talk about this subject in science sometimes. Just like in the book, "dark matter" is hypothesized to be this undetectable mass. In our science world, there are theories that "dark matter", or "dust" (as called in the book), makes up the majority of the mass in the universe. I think this is the main reason why enjoyed this book so much. Even though it evolved a lot of fantasy, I also could relate to it in some way. This book has definitely changed my opinion on fantasy books and I am looking forward to reading more novels from this genre.