Day 6

Black Rain - pages 65-93 (29 pages read)

Grand total - 201 pages read/222 pages goal

Well, Black Rain again. It only manages to get more and more grim and depressing. And graphic. Not content to give us a taste of what people went through after the bomb, he has the main characters almost absurdly trudging into the heart of the aftermath trying to get out.

Maybe it makes sense, I don't know, but from a reading point of view, it doesn't sound right. First the uncle and niece are both outside the main area, though the uncle gets partly caught in it. Yet they both make their way home closer to the heart of it, which I suppose makes sense wanting to find your family. But once they're all reunited, they eventually decide to make their way to a factory associated with the uncle, and go pretty much straight through the heart of the disaster, including through heavy smoke and fires, almost getting killed along the way, and passing bodies after bodies after bodies and suffering after suffering after suffering.

So why go through the heart of it? Sure, I don't know Hiroshima's layout (I have looked at a map though to find some points mentioned in the book and I know where they home was supposed to be), but why couldn't they have gone outside the city first, then around? Why trudge right through it? To me, it seems the answer is to give the author a way to go on and on about the horrors found there. So yes, still not enjoying it!

Really, that book club, ugh, I still can't get over that this was the winner when I would've been happy enough with all but two of the nine choices (this and Storm Front). I mean, how did we wind up picking such a depressing, grim, exploitative book?

On a brighter note, I notice I'm getting close to my first "book" read! (260 pages) Yeah!