Books : The Road (Oprah's Book Club)

Rating: - Awful waste of time
I have no idea why Oprah and her readers liked this book so much! The plot hinges on coincidence and doesn't stand up to too much thinking. Things happen at the right time (for the author), but not likely if this were actually happening.

Bad waste of time.

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Rating: - Living with No Hope
No color. No beauty. Music is meaningless. Art is pointless. Sounds mask danger and no one is to be trusted. Not even family.

The characters have two bullets and few choices for their use: Survive for the next day or end the horror of living with no hope no food no government no safety.

This novel is classic McCarthy. Antihero characters. Ambiguous endings. Harsh settings. And cannabalism.

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Rating: - Awesome read
I remember having to take those advanced English courses back in High School. I was drafted because I did pretty well in a Creative Writing course, and the English department had an authoritarian system that forced the unwilling to take more English. All whining aside, I actually came to enjoy analyzing stories and earning the nickname "misanthrope".

The only reason to inflict my sufferings on the rest of the world is that "The Road" is the first book in my life that would have inspired me to write a paper of my own volition. I want to write about the lessons in the book, the underlying meanings, and even search for symbolism that I am not sure the writer actually meant to put in there, but are sufficiently plausible to satisfy an English teacher looking for symbolism and archetypes and whatnot.

I have read the 1-star reviews to see why the writers felt this excellent book deserved just one. The poor grammar and punctuation were so much a part of the book that I did not notice them. And I'm the sort of person who notices all of the errors in the emails of others, and cannot catch 100% of my own until I re-read my messages after sending. I noticed some idiosyncratic words and grammar, but they belonged to the characters, not to the author. I almost want to shout to the negative reviewers that they must have missed the obvious lessons in the story. They must have missed the fact that there are scenes of great horror, but this is not a horror story.

More than anything, I want to cast a 5-star vote for this gook. Technically, it may not be great, but it is awesomely good. I am inclined to create an entirely new class of "good" for this book.

'Nuff said

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Rating: - Okay? Not Okay.
Ive never written a bookreview before.
Never?
Never.
Okay?
Okay.

I had to force myself to finish this book, and I can't say I'm glad I did. Like the Seinfeld epidsode where Elaine was forced to watch "The English Patient" a second time, I kept thinking, "Oh, just die, die already!"

Maybe I'm a prude because I hated the way the author took liberties with the English language, and not, to me, in a positive way. I kept wondering why he chose to write his book in English when he so seemed to hate its rules.

Besides that, I couldn't identify with the characters, or their plight. If, as the book claims, the bleak landscape had been this way for years, why are they just now seeking some other venue? Whatever.

I really hated this book. For others who feel the same, I recommend "The Secret History" by Donna Tartt. Now THAT's a novel worth reading.

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Rating: - The Road... to nowhere
This book is hands down the worst book I've ever read in my entire life. Boring, poor writing style, choppy sentences, poor descriptions of time and place. Do not buy the hype on the book. There is no point to any of it. It is a page turner mostly because you keep turning the page hoping something actually happens. I can sum it up like this: Man and boy walk on road avoiding a handful of "bad guys" (any confrontations in this book are lame) while running out of food and water and then just when you think all hope is lost they find some food and water. Then, they start walking again to some unknown destination while running out of food and water. There isn't even a logical ending to this. Waste of time and money.