My Favorite Book

... is usually the one I'm reading right now. Although I should say, more accurately since this is the case, the one I just finished reading.

Let me just say this. Holy Christ. Cormac McCarthy is a fucking genius.

I got The Road from the library yesterday... I'd forgotten my list of books to read at home, so I got on the net to find Pulitzer Prize-winning books (it's a goal of mine to read everything winning that prize for fiction), and the first novel the library actually had was that one.

Lucky me.

A lot of the time lately I've been wondering if I've become too jaded with reading or desensitized to fiction somehow, like people say can happen if you are exposed to too much violence. I thought perhaps I've been expecting too much from my books. For example, a lot of what I've read lately starts out amazingly, but then peters out towards the end. Or, I find a book is good, but ultimately I want MORE.

Well, I got MORE with The Road.

This book is an amazing exploration of love, living, and dying. McCarthy's language is perfectly concise, not one single extraneous word, and he manages to jam-pack this brevity with breath-taking suspense, aching existentialism, and ultimately, unquenchable hope.

If you're a parent and you pick up this book, give yourself time and space to process it. It will break your heart. If you're not a parent and you pick up this book, give yourself time and space to process it. It will break your heart.

The Road is spectacular.