Cormac McCarthy is one of my favorite writers, but I have to take his writing in small doses. Somehow his writing seems to distill human experience into sharp jolting slugs that tear into you and leave you either hurting or wanting more – sometimes both. I really liked The Road, loved Blood Meridian, and I also was taken by this book which starts so gently that I dreaded what might happen next.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I liked that the writing doesn\u2019t worry too much about grammar and subject, and instead drops you into a boy\u2019s life and forces you to figure it out. He starts out at night with a friend on horseback, leaving his Texas town for good and heading south to Mexico for adventure. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201c\u2026they rode out on the round dais of the earth which alone was dark and no light to it and which carried their figures and bore them up into the swarming stars so they rode not under but among them and they rode at once jaunty and circumspect, like thieves newly loosed in that dark electric, like young thieves in a glowing orchard, loosely jacketed against the cold and ten thousand worlds for the choosing.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
It is writing like this that really makes it an epic read. I especially liked the dialogue between the main character and his friend, effortlessly riffing off of each other. You can tell they know and trust each other so well. I love reading the dialogue in Robert B. Parker\u2019s Spenser books, and I think they are in a similar style, which I don\u2019t see often in other books. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
A great story, fascinating characters (without being over-the-top), and brutality and beauty in equal measure. This was brilliant writing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I need a little emotional break after reading this one – so I\u2019m reading a different style of book now called A Calling for Charlie Barnes by Joshua Ferris. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Cormac McCarthy is one of my favorite writers, but I have to take his writing in small doses. Somehow his writing seems to distill human experience into sharp jolting slugs that tear into you and leave you either hurting or wanting more – sometimes both. I really liked The Road, loved Blood Meridian, and I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[14],"class_list":["post-3379","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-books"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pOpl7-Sv","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3379","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3379"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3379\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3379"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3379"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3379"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}