"Rabbit, Run" by John Updike

Rabbit, Run by John Updike
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Ok book. It tells the story of Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom, a middle-class American, married with one kid and another on the way. He is a former star basketball player in High School, who is no longer the star and doesn't know what to do with his life. He starts hating his life, so he leaves his wife, and takes up with a part-time prostitute for a little while. The book is mostly about his conversations with the people around him, and about him fumbling around without knowing what to do. The book is insightful and uncensored, taking a hard look into the concepts of family and marriage. The problem is, it's mostly boring. The first half of the book was extremely boring, and I was tempted to stop listening to it many times. Halfway through, things start becoming a little more interesting, mostly because that's when things get harder, and Updike starts looking at what is going on with the other characters a little. But it's just a little, he doesn't explorer them too deeply nor for too long a time. In the end, it was just ok.

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Station Eleven, by Emily St. John Mandel

Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Very good book. The characters were interesting, and the back-and-forth narration managed to add a lot of mystery and thrill to a fairly simple plot. However, I didn't like the use of the Prophet as the main antagonist. It was just irritating to have someone like him (a religious fundamentalist) given such an important role. We already have too many of those around in the US before the collapse of civilization, so it's annoying to have to deal with another one. The one small consolation is that a few comments by the main characters make it seem that these zealots are very common, and they are basically just a pest, not really that important, so that made Prophet-plot less annoying.

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