First Two Book Reviews

The Road by Cormac McCarthy

WOW. This book is about a man and a young boy traveling in the United State sometime in the future after some great apocalypse. You follow along these two characters as they travel down the Road. Information is given to you slowly to help you figure out what has happened. It is all given basically from the point of view of the two main characters. As if the reader is an invisible observer that they never acknowledge, but is always there. These two men, whom you soon enough learn are father and son, are on a path of survival. They continue heading south through ash covered landscape to make it to warmer lands so they can live through the coming winter. The sky and sun blotted out by ash. No food and a gun with few bullets is all they have.

McCarthy strips down the novel to its absolute bare minimum. No unused wordiness, only what is absolutely necessary to tell the story. This book is truly a masterwork. McCarthy finds some of the elements of human nature, love, survival and endurance and simply draws you into their lives. Each page draws you further in and farther along. The entire book seems to have this overhanging doom. As if you the reader are a ghost haunting them on their journey. You hope they will make it to a place of refuge, but it seems as if they never will.

I cannot recommend the book high enough. There is no doubt that will prove to be an American Classic. On my scale from 1-13 I solidly put this at 13. This book will be a book that could be read again and again and its simple elegance will make it as enjoyable as the first time. I plan on keeping a running review of the books I have read. Starting with this and continuing with books I finish in the future. I will post them as blogs. Since I don't use the blogs really for anything else, I suggest, if you are interested in some books or just want to know what I am up to you can subscribe. I promise no advetising to my naked webcam or penis enlargement pills. Unless it's a good book about it!

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon

The book begins in Pre- World War II New York. Jospeh Kavalier and cousin Sammy Clayman (Clay) are brought together after Joe escaped the oppression of the Third Riech in Prague. It explains how, as a child, Joesph had an interest in the careers of escapists such as Houdini. He is then trained by one of the greatest of his time, Kornblum. Eventally getting a visa to the United States using the fact that he was originally born in Poland on a family vacation. The boys get involved in the comic book profession and invent a character named The Escapist. Eventually, this leads to them meeting the loves of their lives and how that comes to affect their lives in a strange love pentagon.

The thing about this book is that you become vested into the lives of the charecters. You are with them from when the boys are just coming of age, until they are well on in years. You feel like a friend that is reading about someone that was close that you have lost contact with. This element gave the book a biographical flavor which was very enjoyable. (Going so far as to have notes at the bottom of pages.) In fact, the entire book gave a feeling of realism. There was just a touch of the mystical. Just as real life will occasionally give you a touch of the unbelievable, so does this book..

Intermittently, a chapter would come up that would seem totally unrelated to the story, or a side tangent that didn't seem to be connected to the main story line. Chabon uses the this method to add substance to the story and even add whole new elements. I found this to be one of the more enjoyable parts of the book. Whenever I came to one of these chapters I was excited to find out what was going to happen and was usually surprised where it ended up.

I have been lucky to have been reading a multitude of great books. I would put this as one of the best books I have read lately. After having finished it I miss being a part of the world I was in. One of the things I really enjoy about reading is occasianlly finding that paragraph or sentence that strikes you in a way that leaves you feeling good. A sense of wording or comparison that sits well with you. This book repeatedly does this. I would definitly recommend this to anyone interested.

I plan a grading on a scale from 1-13. This is a normal 1-10 scale with the extra three for great books.

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay I would rate at an 11. This books goes above and beyond what most books are and I would consider it one of the best books written in the past ten years.