Clearly, I Need Professional Help

So, prior to going back to therapy (which - it will soon be obvious - I clearly need), I have read yet another post-apocalyptic novel.  No, I don't know what is wrong with me.  Yes, I agree that something is very, very wrong.  I promise my next novel post will not involve the end of the world as we know it.  I'm blaming this one on the Twilight series and the accompanying films - one of which my teenage daughter dragged me to recently.

Lately I've been getting book ideas from O magazine, and one of the books from her list that looked interesting was Justin Cronin's, The Passage.  For those of us who are (more than) a little tired of pretty, sparkly vampires, Cronin delivers true monsters - and not the kind of monsters who invade our pretty little unsuspecting world, but monsters we create ourselves.  I find that an interesting little twist on good old Vlad.

And I LOVED it.  It's a good long read - a dark, twisted Odyssey with a whole cast of interesting, likeable and flawed characters rich with moments of heroism, great twists and richly painted settings and plot events.  One of the very best things about it is the ending, which is just as flawed and complicated as real life really is, and it is one of those books that you are so sorry to see end when it's over.  Every once in a while I read a book that makes me want to pause before picking up anything else (and this is very, very rare with me - I ALWAYS have a book in the queue).  The last book I can remember feeling this way about was Memoirs of a Geisha - after which I took a week-long hiatus so that I could continue to live in Japan a little longer.  I think it says something that I was sorry to leave Cronin's world - which is arguably nowhere near as nice a place as Golden's Japan.  If it hadn't been so wonderfully and completely terrifying, I'd have handed it to my teenager - 'honey, this is what vampires are really like!'  No one sparkles in the sun in The Passage.

So hopefully this marks the end of my little post-apocalyptic orgy (which I will confess also included a viewing of The Road and The Book of Eli - seriously - WHAT is WRONG with me?).  Someone please recommend something a little more hopeful and uplifting for me to read now!