The Road by Cormac McCarthy

America has burned to the ground, the land is freezing cold, black ash mixed with snow falls upon the few survivors in this dark and postapocalyptic tale which won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 2007. The Road by Cormac McCarthy was a spectacular reading experience, and I am left wondering why I did not read it before now.

Nothing is alive anymore, no trees, no birds, no fish, no flowers except those few unlucky human survivors who have formed small communes across the land, not welcoming any strangers. The Man and his son The Boy are wandering the land, heading for the ocean while trying to avoid the packs of road rats (cannibals) roaming the desolate and soot ridden land in search of anything to eat. The Boy is everything to The Man and vice versa. They are searching for people like themselves - good people - but as their journey continue, it is getting harder and harder to believe that there is actually much humanity left on this desolate and dark earth.

The Road is read as part of the 2010 Global Reading Challenge.

One Day by David Nicholls

One Day by David Nicholls is a saga spanning 20 years. We follow Emma Morley and Dexter Mayhew from the day they graduate from university and the next 20 years. Each year we meet them on July 15, where the author takes us through both the current day's happenings and the things which has happened over the past year for Emma and Dexter respectively.

On the night of their graduation, Emma and Dexter fool around a bit, make out even, and the night has the promise of something great and romantic, but priviledged Dexter is all set to spend some years travelling the world, while the lesser priviledged Emma is going to find a job - any job - and make a bit of a living. So the morning after graduation, they go their separate ways, and we - the readers - go inside Emma and Dexter's minds, lives, failures and successes.

This book is a long one. And it wasn't really for me. I couldn't really connect with either Emma nor Dexter, even though they have almost the same age as myself and even though we grew up during roughly the same periodes. There should have been plenty to identify with, but instead I got tired with them and their personalities. David Nicholls writes well and the book is well written, but the story didn't grab me at all. Neither was I touched by the story. I was actually a bit disappointed with the whole thing. I failed to see how the Emma and Dexter personalities developed through the years, to me it felt like they remained pretty much the same. Of course, this may be on purpose to show us that whether we are 22 or 42, we remain the same. That said, I did finish the book, and the last third of the book where Emma and Dex are grown ups was quite good.

This book is read as part of the 2010 Global Reading Challenge where I am reading for the Easy Challenge with one book pr. part of the world. This one is read for the Europe-part. Read more about the challenge here.