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I'm just getting ready to start Cormac McCarthy's "All the Pretty Horses" and plan to follow up with the rest of the books in that series.
I read "No Country for Old Men" and really liked it. I tried "Suttree" and could never get much past page 75. How many paragraphs does it take to describe the river?
Picked up "The Road" a couple weeks ago and McCarthy had me weeping by page 11. I could not put that heartbreaking book down. A story of bleakness and danger that we cannot imagine and yet, still one of the strongest love stories I have ever read.
So, to all you Cormac fans....Will I be glad I read "All the Pretty Horses" and should I give "Suttree" another chance?
I think you will like The Border Trilogy. The first book was my least favorite of the three but I still liked it a lot.
If you liked No Country for Old Men then you will like the three in The Border Trilogy. The Road is a different critter. It's not like anything he has written before and it is one of my favorite books.
Charge bravely into All the Pretty Horses. I think you will enjoy it. IMO, he is one of the best authors around but he does mess with my emotions on a regular basis.
Although I do admit it wouldn't hurt my feelings in the least if McCarthy would learn to use quotation marks. His purposeful break of grammar rules in dialogue gets on my nerves. Seems unnecessarily smarty-pantsish to me.
Although I do admit it wouldn't hurt my feelings in the least if McCarthy would learn to use quotation marks. His purposeful break of grammar rules in dialogue gets on my nerves. Seems unnecessarily smarty-pantsish to me.
Yeah...Cormac writes is a type of prose called "stream of consciousness" in which the author simply writes as if he's thinking out loud, or recalling, in his mind, past events and conversations. Thus, just like you or I don't insert quotation marks of even capitalization or punctuation in our thoughts, McCarthy often dispenses with these things as well.
FOr a lot of folks, this type of writing drives them nuts, while others, like myself, absolutely love it! The trick is to get into the flow of the narrative and just let it carry you away. Kind of like getting into the author's own throught processes. Once you can do that, it can be a great literary experience and it also has the ability to move oyu and convey great imagery and emotion.
But, to be sure, Cormac is an acquired taste. I've read just about everything he's written, but had to put down "The Road" after about 30 pages; it was simply too damn depressing.
If you aren't too squeamish and want to read a book of his that will really blow your hair back, try "Blood Meridian." The violence and graphic depictions of the Old West in that book makes "No Country For Old Men" seem like a Dr. Suess story! LOL.
I have Blood Meridian waiting for me at the library! I haven't read any of his books yet but I've heard Blood Meridian is his best so I'm starting with that one. I actually own a copy of The Road that I got from the used bookstore at the library but I have so many other books to read that I haven't gotten around to reading it yet.
I guess people have different expectations of what they want a book to do for them, which makes it perilous to recommend a book to another reader. I thought Suttree was the best of all his novels, followed by Blood Meridian. I stopped reading Pretty Horses after a chapter or two because of the stilted dialog, if I remember correctly.
I loved 'Pretty Horses', and was highly disturbed by 'The Road'. If I didn't know it, I would think they were written by two different authors. Not to say The Road was a bad book, it was very good. I was just depressed for weeks after reading it.
'The Crossing' was also really good.
I have 'No Country for Old Men' on my pile-o-books-to-read teetering on my end table. Looking forward to it.
McCarthy is my favorite living novelist. All of his works are worth reading. Of course, I like some better than others, but that’s true of any author.
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