<p>I have just recently gotten in to Cormac McCarthy. I read No Country For Old Men after seeing the movie. There was really very little difference between the two. The Coen’s remained very faithful to the book. I just finished The Road and all I can say is what an amazing writer McCarthy is!</p>
<p>The Road is certainly dark, there’s no denying that, but I couldn’t put it down. A lady in line to board a flight I was said I was to be commended for reading the most depressing book ever written, though at the same time she did say she loved it.</p>
<p>I think I’ve go to add All the Pretty Horses to my list of things to read this summer.</p>
<p>Thanks for the suggestion. I’m headed to Borders this evening. I was thinking of picking up 100 Years of Solitude. I also want to read James Carroll’s American Requiem, and a book called Nixonland.</p>
<p>I read The Road last summer; it was amazing to experience the emotion of dread personified through this story. It’s not a book that you read, but one that absorbs you, like absolute darkness. You feel yourself disappearing into the story, an unwilling yet unresisting witness.</p>
<p>I loved loved loved All The Pretty Horses. Less so The Crossing, and pretty much (but not AS much) Cities of the Plain. All The Pretty Horses is on my very short list of great books written during the last 30 years.</p>
<p>I couldn’t get through Blood Meridian. It never completely engaged me. My daughter and her friends worship it, however, and more or less share Harold Bloom’s opinion. I didn’t read The Road because my daughter thought it was much inferior to everything else, and I trust her on that.</p>
<p>I don’t know if Blood Meridian is the most violent book ever written but, with the possible exception of The Killer Inside Me, it’s the most violent book I’ve ever read. Unlike The Killer Inside Me, it has a point other than the violence though. All The Pretty Horses is excellent also, though a much more conventional novel than Blood Meridian.</p>
<p>The only one by McCarthy I’ve read is “The Road.” Didn’t like it at all – the subject or his writing style. Are all his books written in the same style? If so, I’m definitely not a fan.</p>
<p>“100 Years of Solitude” is a little eccentric, but excellent!</p>
<p>No. The prose in The Road is, as I recall, very spare and flat - lots of sentence fragments, lots of simple declarative sentences, etc. (which seems to fit the desolate landscape through which the father and son are traveling).</p>
<p>The other books of McCarthy’s that I’ve read, particularly All the Pretty Horses, are written in a style that is, by contrast, very elaborate - lots of longer and more complex sentences, lots of extended description, lots of cadences that recall the King James Bible, etc. (so much so that, at times, the book feels like a throwback to an earlier, 19th century style of writing).</p>
<p>Thanks for the link. Maybe I’ll try another one of his books. But first I’m reading all 7 Harry Potter books straight through, one after the other. I didn’t get through all of them before, and summer seems like a good time to jump in. I’ll save the “heavy” reading for post-beach season!</p>
<p>Thanks for the link to the New York Times piece - I missed that the first time through. I’m currently reading Suttree, so more interesting now that it’s supposedly somewhat autobiographical.</p>
<p>Blood Meridian will have to be next.</p>
<p>Viggo Mortensen in “The Road”!! - I can definitely see that working. I did read a piece in the NYT recently about the making of that movie - a rather dark experience overall, as would be expected.</p>
<p>I loved “The Road”. Usually, I do not recall certain lines in books. The line below is one of the best lines in any book and certainly rings true. </p>
<p>You end up forgetting the things you want to remember and remembering those things you wish you could forget.</p>