Wednesday, January 22, 2014

Top 15 most depressing books

One title on The Telegraph's list of the 15 most depressing books:
The Road by Cormac McCarthy

A cataclysm has destroyed the Earth and a father and son must survive on their wits (the mother has already committed suicide). Scavenging for food, they are desperate to avoid the cannibals roaming the waste land – in one scene they see a baby roasted on a spit. McCarthy’s imaginary world conforms to Hobbes’s dictum about man in the state of nature: here life is nasty, brutish and short.
Learn about another book on the list.

The Road appears on Joseph D’Lacey's top ten list of horror books, the Barnes & Noble Review's list of five unforgettable fathers from fiction, Ken Jennings's list of eight top books about parents and kids, Anthony Horowitz's top ten list of apocalypse books, Karen Thompson Walker's list of five notable "What If?" books, John Mullan's list of ten of the top long walks in literature, Tony Bradman's top ten list of father and son stories, Ramin Karimloo's six favorite books list, Jon Krakauer's five best list of books about mortality and existential angst, William Skidelsky's list of the top ten most vivid accounts of being marooned in literature, Liz Jensen's top 10 list of environmental disaster stories, the Guardian's list of books to change the climate, David Nicholls' top ten list of literary tear jerkers, and the Times (of London) list of the 100 best books of the decade. In 2009 Sam Anderson of New York magazine claimed "that we'll still be talking about [The Road] in ten years."

--Marshal Zeringue