Some recent books I've read

I'm not going to do formal book reviews here. I simply don't have the time, and there are plenty of other websites and blogs that offer nothing but reviews that are far better than what I could write.

By "formal review," I mean an analysis of themes, plot, character arcs, where the book may lie in comparison to others in the genre, etc. etc. I was done with those kinds of reviews/reports when I got out of college. I enjoy reading them, but I'm no longer interested in writing them. And as I said, I really don't have the time.

I did have a "What I'm Reading" section on my website, but the blog is easier to update so I think I'll just migrate that here.

I've read a ton of books since I last updated my website, but one of the more recent books I read was THE ROAD, by Cormack McCarthy. This is a devastating novel, a tale of an unnamed father and son who live on a dying Earth and are simply trying to survive the aftermath of an unknown cataclysm. The world is cold, ashen, gray; literally a corpse across which the father and son journey on their way to the coast. They have no idea what they will find there, no real hope, but the coast is a destination, a goal, and so they flee cold and death for what they hope is something better.

The son is the moral compass for them both, reassuring his father -- and in turn asking for reassurance from the older man -- that they are the "good guys" in a world where men murder others to eat them because there is no food, no power, no civilization.

This is a grim, haunting book. It stayed with me long after I finished it. Recommended.

More later....