It’s 105 degrees here which means the one-person preferred pastime experience is reading, but not ordinary reading. The summer is the time to find something to devour. I have an endless queue of business books and professional articles that will eventually trickle down into my subconscious or become obsolete. The great thing about reading about technology and business is the army of editors that review and revise the thinking behind most of the great ideas of the day, so you don’t have to.
What I’ve most enjoyed this summer is Justin Cronin’s, The Passage. It’s such a popular book that there is little I can say that hasn’t been all ready said. Forget that it’s easy to package the 800 page novel as a vampire book, which might turn many off, but to do so completely misses the nuances and brilliance of the story. It’s a wonderful journey about the love between fathers and daughters, an allegory about the survival of the humanity and retelling of the story of Noah. It’s not The Stand and it’s not, and I’m quoting another reviewer, about “your teenager’s vampires.” The creatures in the book are the results of secret government experiments gone-real-bad in a very believable political climate that mirrors our current culture of distrust and suspicion. Every character’s story is told with a level of empathy and honesty that’s hard to dismiss or forget.
Yes, parts of the book are terrifying, but not in that, “I’ll never sleep again” kind of terrifying. Cronin has an amazing gift for language and he makes you want to read the most horrifying parts of the book, over and over again.
One of my favorite passages
“That was when he heard the sound, coming from beneath the overpass. A soft, wet ripping, like sheets of damp paper being torn in half, or the skin being pried off an orange fat with juice.”
Close your eyes and picture me holding two thumbs up.
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