speared, drugged, and left to die on a curb

The last three books I've listened to during my driving, in order of most recent:

The Road, Cormac McCarthy
Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
Thermopylae, Paul Cartledge

All have been engrossing, stirring, and well written. They've also all been depressing in a way that I don't think fully dawned on me until just the last couple of days; The Road especially. I haven't finished it yet, but will tomorrow, and am dreading it because I know the story has to end badly. I could tell ten minutes into it that not only was I listening to words better written than any I'd heard in a very long time, but that this was going to be brutal. It's a loving and warm arm around the shoulders followed by repeated blows to the gut, but McCarthy's skill in telling the story has kept me enthusiastically going back, a battered girlfriend hoping against hope that things will turn out alright, even as she cries and spits up blood.

I highly recommend all three books, just not in a row. Maybe not even in the same year.

UPDATE: Finished The Road. I had limited time to grab a new audiobook the other night at the library, with one kid happily yelling his head off in my arm and the other pulling every book she wanted off the shelves in the kids' section (meaning, pretty much, every book). So... my next choice, the one that was going to be lighthearted and fun? The Assault on Reason, by Mr. Lighthearted, Al Gore.