A-Z Wednesday: On the Beach

A-Z Wednesday is hosted by Reading at the Beach.

Here are the rules: Go to your stack of books and find one whose title starts with the Letter of the Week and post the following:

1. A photo of the book
2. Title and synopsis
3. A link (Amazon, B&N, etc.)
4. Come back here and leave your link in the comments

If you’ve already reviewed this book, post a link to the review as well. Be sure to visit other participants to see what books they have posted and leave them a comment (we all love comments, don’t we?) Who know? You may find your next “favorite” book.

THIS WEEK’S LETTER IS: O

My “O” Book is:

On the Beach

by Nevil Shute

(New York: Ballantine, 1974)

Paperback, 280 Pages, Fiction

ISBN: 9780345311481, US$6.99

In this last of meeting places
We grope together

And avoid speech

Gathered on this beach of the tumid river…

This is the way the world ends

This is the way the world ends

This is the way the world ends

Not with a bang but a whimper.

—T.S. Eliot

From the Cover: The last generation … innocent victims of an accidental nuclear war, living out the last days, making plans that will never be carried out, making do with what they have—however temporary it might be—hoping for a miracle that will not come. And as the deadly rain moves ever closer, the world as we know it winds toward an inevitable end. …

My Review: On the Beach is one of those classic books that no one knows about. I first came across it reading Stephen King’s Danse Macabre wherein he mentions it (with George Stewart’s Earth Abides) as inspiration for his end of the world epic, The Stand, and since The Stand is one of my favorite King novels, I had to get my hands on it. I read this about five or six years ago (before I started this blog and when my reviews went out via email) and loved it. It is a brilliant and moving end of the world that Shute has created and one that needs to be better acknowledged than it is. It really is a “forgotten classic.”