books @ cc.

by Cormac McCarthy (2006)

A father and his son wander through a charred, ravaged post-apocalyptic world, where all matter of wildlife is extinct and the rain ashen. Scavenging the scarce food that is left and, with a pistol, fending of the lawless “bad guys” — lawless, plundering bands of cannibals, they continue their journey to reach the coast, despite not knowing what awaits them there.

by John Updike (2006)

Ahmad Mulloy Ashmawy is the son of an Irish-American mother, Teresa Mulloy, and an Egyptian father, Omar Ashmawy, who disappeared when Ahmad was three. Taken under the strict guidance of Shaik Rashid when he was eleven where he begins his bi-weekly Qur’an and Arabic lessons, Ahmad moves through the post-9/11 “New Prospect” in New Jersey with the (typical) revulsion for the materialistic, hedonistic “Americanism”.

And Other Tales from the American Underground
by Eric Schlosser (2003)

Three essays on different aspects of American underground — marijuana trade (Reefer Madness), migrant labourers (In the Strawberry Fields) and porn industry (An Empire of the Obscene) — offering general, if rather superficial and unsatisfying, view of ‘illicit’ industry.

by Nathanael West (1939)

Set in Hollywood in the era of the Great Depression, The Day of the Locust is a short but painful satire of the visions of American disillusioned dreams and fantasy factory. Todd Hackett, a talented set-designer, drifts through a city deliberately reduced to its most base depiction of failed dreams and false glitters, peopled with characters plucked out straight from tabloids and noir-ish B-grade movies

by Donna Tartt (1992)

A scholarship student, Richard, upon arriving at the exclusive Hampden College at Vermont, was intrigued by a (sophistry-exuding,) tightly-knit group of privileged Greek students with, well, yes, a dark secret. Written in a confessional, retrospective manner by Richard, the narrative is engaging, never giving too much, although in the first place it never strives to hide its intentions, rather enjoying recalling after the facts.

The murder-amidst-rich-bourgeois-college-kids plot might turn off those loathe to standard American teenage thriller, and yes, at its heart The Secret History is a thriller (albeit a well-written one) suitable if you’re looking for a light entertainment page-turner. I can’t help thinking it’s almost like a cross between Love in Thoughts and Lord of the Flies.

What the All-American Meal is Doing to the World
by Eric Schlosser (2001)

A well-researched and very readable example of popular journalism on a topic that has attracted increasing concerns and antagonism. By now an average person would at least have a vague rancour for its nutritionally-empty, junk calories if not for its “McAmericanism”. But what really lurks behind those buns, the high school kids behind the counters, the slaughterhouse, the laboratories that manufacture the globally uniform smell of those “barbecued meat patty”? This book tells the history of fast-food industry and its impacts on social and cultural landscape.