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Decided to put away Kirino’s book once again. I’m not in the right mindframe to read such a book at the moment. Gods know that I tried, however.

I am currently half way through "The Gathering" but not particularly impressed, to be honest. It IS an interesting read – well written, almost like stream of consciousness at times, gives a wonderful insight on the protagonist’s life, relationships and her family. I give the author credit for all that. What puts me off is her peculiar way of throwing in some nasty words here and there, whenever she refers to sexual act, sexual organs and so on. I am not a purist, I don’t mind dirty language at all, yet in case of this book it makes me wince. Maybe that was the point to clash a powerful description of a particularly complicated emotional state after desperate casual sex with a dirty, down-to-earth expression like "the fleshy flower of my cunt"… maybe it was supposed to work this way but… I don’t buy it, it ruins the mood for me. Let’s just hope the story (though there’s not much going on in terms of events, it’s all about emotions and relationships) will not disappoint in the long run.

One of the books I finished reading not so long ago is Cormac McCarthy’s "The Road". Yeah, I am pretty sure it is a book so famous that it requires no recommendation, but let me vent, please. It’s one of the most powerful books I have ever read in my life and that’s saying a lot. One of the two books that made me cry, too.

From the official blurb: A father and his son walk alone through burned America. Nothing moves in the ravaged landscape save the ash on the wind. It is cold enough to crack stones, and when the snow falls it is gray. The sky is dark. Their destination is the coast, although they don’t know what, if anything, awaits them there.

It is a tale of a post-apocalyptic world – all the plants are dead, there are no animals left alive. No sounds, no colors, no sun, just snow, rain and corpses everywhere. It doesn’t matter what had caused the apocalypse, the reader never finds out. What matters is what is left of humanity after the world was destroyed, if anything. There are cannibals and people kept for food like cattle. There are men making their women pregnant and eating the babies as soon as they are born. And there is the father and his little son, struggling to survive, protecting one another with their love. Considering the setting and the drastic events presented, the book should be incredibly depressing but, paradoxically, it is not. Despite everything, it carries some warmth, maybe not as much as hope, but definitely a ray of light in darkness. There is not much to say about the "plot" as such, but I could say a lot about the style. Incredible, is the word that comes to mind. Raw dialogue masterfully mixed with poetry-like passages. Deep philosophical thoughts contrasted with mundane language used to present them. Deep profound love sparring with hopelessness and cowardice. On the whole: a must read.

As for crying… here’s a song that ALWAYS makes me cry. It’s just so darn… I dunno – beautiful, I guess:

The band forbade posting the video on YouTube so I had to link it from a Russian counterpart of the site. You may need to wait a bit for it to load.

They have a damn nice collection of Vitas videos there, BTW, here’s the link to the search result list: rutube.ru/search.html