Just around the time COVID hit I had started reading The Road. Man is it a bleak book, which isn't something I normally have a problem with, but it hit way too close to home at a time when grocery store shelves were looking pretty picked-over and people were getting into fights over toilet paper.
I put it down and haven't gotten around to picking it back up yet.
Possibly the worst part is that I've been in a bit of a reading slump for the last few years, and I was just really starting to work my way out of it and had read a few books but that kind of hit my reset button and I haven't been able to really get restarted again.
I do intend to go back and restart it at some point though, I really enjoyed it, just really unfortunate timing.
I physically recoiled at the idea of reading that book during the pandemic. I remember how I felt reading it, and if that had been on top of my pandemic depression... not sure I would've made it.
Yeah, the handful of chapters I read were amazing, McCarthy's writing style really sells the post-apocalyptic vibe, so very blunt and to-the-point, almost like it's the writer saying "we're all fucked and I'm not going to sugar-coat it because there's no point anyway"
I didn't even have a bad case of pandemic depression, I've been lucky and these last few years have actually been really good to me, the pandemic and everything since have probably been the best years of my life, but I don't live in a bubble and The Road was not the right vibe to go with all of the bullshit in the world.