The Road

The Road is shaping up to be a great book. I was somewhat dumbfounded and angry when I heard that we were going to be reading a book by an author who doesn't use quotation marks, and as I had heard at the time, used periods sparingly. Dumbfounded because I was sure that a literary work of this description couldn't be considered a literary work at all, and therefore had no place in a language arts program, and angry because I thought that sifting through text rendered meaningless by lack of punctuation would be a waste of my time. Luckily, the rumor of the lacking periods was false (although McCarthy might have been able to pull it off). Surprisingly, I am finding The Road to be quite readable, even one of the most enjoyable books I've read in a very long time.
The lack of appropriate punctuation regarding conversation is something that I am now enjoying. I feel like it forces me to think a lot more while I read, allowing me to gain a deeper understanding of the book, while teaching me something about the variations of writing style. So far, reading The Road has taught me that writing has no limits, and because of this, it can be made your own. It has also taught me not to jump to conclusion about pieces of literature, and to try new and different books that I normally would not read.