Susan Hated Literature

So I bought my shiny shiny Nintendo DS Lite last night. And got a great deal from Argos. €149 for the console, a game^[1] and an accessory pack. So basically I paid for the console and got the rest of the stuff for free. I also bought one of those Brain Training thingies. Which was supposed to cost 30 quid, only they only charged my 15. Score!

And I’ve gone ahead and ordered my R2 card plus 2gb micro card so once that arrives I’ll be well sorted for all my gaming needs.

In other news Carl’s RIP Challenge comes to an end today. And for it I read Fool Moon by Jim Butcher, The Prestige by Christopher Priest, Danse Macabre by Laurell K. Hamilton, Wormwood by Poppy Z.Brite, Lost Souls by Michael Collins, and The Road by Cormac MacCarthy. And I’ve just bought Stephanie Meyer’s Eclipse^[2] so I’ll read that this evening. And there are plenty more reviews for you to investigate here.

Author: Cormac McCarthy
ISBN: 9780330447546 DDC: 813.54
Read for the RIP Challenge
See also: LibaryThing ; Darryl’s Library ; Skewed Perspectives ; Cynical Opimitsm ; Bookwomon

When he woke in the woods in the dark and the cold of the night he’d reach out to touch the child sleeping beside him. Nights dark beyond darkness and the days more gray each one than what had gone before.

This is a novel set at some unidentified point in the future when the world has pretty much come to an end. Something, we don’t know what, has brought society down. There is little food and little shelter left, and for our two main protagonists there is always the danger that they might meet someone on the road, someone who might kill them in order to take what little they have, or maybe someone who might kill them in order to eat them. They travel on, this unnamed man and unnamed boy, constantly on the road, moving trying to find something.

Continue Reading »

Or the evening redness
Author: Cormac McCarthy
ISBN: 0679728759
DDC: 813.5420
See also: CormacMcCarthy.com ; Library Thing

See the child. He is pale and thin, he wears a thin and ragged linen shirt. He stokes the scullery fire. Outside lie dark turned fields with rags of snow and darker woods beyond that harbor yet a few last wolves.

This may sound contradictory; I would heartily recommend this book, I have no idea what it is all about. I can tell you a basic outline of the plot, our main protagonist, who is known only as the kid, leaves home at fourteen and travels the American West, encountering violent deed after violent deed, ending up riding with the Glanton gang as they set out to “protect” people from the savage Indians.

That is the storyline, but that isn’t what this book is about, as I said, I have no idea what it is about. Violence is obviously a central theme, but whether McCarthy means that such violence is a part of all humanity and impossible to ignore, or whether he means it as a warning, or indeed something completely different I couldn’t say. So why would I recommend it?

Quite simply the prose is just beautiful. It may be describing horrible acts of death and destruction, but it reads wonderfully.

The man who believes that the secrets of the world are forever hidden lives in mystery and fear. Superstition will drag him down. The rain will erode the deeds of his life. But that man who sets himself the task of singling out the thread of order from the tapestry will by the decision alone have taken charge of the world and it is only be taking charge that he will effect a way to dictate the terms of his own fate. [...] The freedom of birds is an insult to me. I’d have them all in zoos.

I think I’ll probably have to read it again at some point, maybe with some thought thrown in, but for now I’m happy to have read it.