Just finished reading Earth Abides last night written by George R Stewert in 1949.

Surprisingly this book holds up extremely well. Its easy to see that so many books and movies descend from this book.

2 years a go I finally got around to reading The Stand by Stephen King. It was disappointing. I haven’t read a lot of King, but from the popularity and hype of this book I’d expected something so much more. I didn’t expect the mysticism in the Stand to be quite so prevalent, and also quite so unimportant in the end. There was a huge buildup to finale without satisfaction. Also I hated half of the characters in the book. That’s not to say you have to love all of them, but some were so bad, I dreaded their chapters. What I loved about the Stand was the civilization building. Sadly there wasn’t enough, even though I was reading the super uncut version. Admittedly that may also be the reason I hated so many characters. Even Stephen King should listen when his editors say to cut something.

Earth Abides had the exact opposite effect on me. This was the book I was hoping to read two years ago. Some may find it boring, since there is little action, but about 50 pages in I was totally captivated by Ish and his growing tribe. I worried with him about the future. How is the Tribe going to survive when the canned food runs out? Can’t they see that even if they don’t run out of bullets, the bullets will eventually quit firing? I loved how Ish resolved the problem of passing on spark of intellect in a completely unexpected way that ultimately saved the tribe from destruction.

This book was also not without some mysticism, but instead of over the top pure evil vs pure good, we got Ish recognizing that he was becoming a prophet or God in the eyes of his grandchildren and was not at all comfortable with it, but feared what would fill the void if he tried to counteract it.

I highly recommend this book if you haven’t read it. It scratched an itch that I hadn’t quite been able to reach before.