false http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1174413525m/394535.jpg 394535 21 "The men as they rode turned black in the sun from the blood on their clothes and their faces and then paled slowly in the rising dust until they assumed once more the color of the land through which they passed." If what we call "horror" can be seen as including any literature that has dark, horrific subject matter, then <i>Blood Meridian</i> is, in this reviewer's estimation, the best horror novel ever written. It's a perverse, picaresque Western about bounty hunters for Indian scalps near the Texas-Mexico border in the 1850s--a ragged caravan of indiscriminate killers led by an unforgettable human monster called "The Judge." Imagine the imagery of Sam Peckinpah and Heironymus Bosch as written by William Faulkner, and you'll have just an inkling of this novel's power. From the opening scenes about a 14-year-old Tennessee boy who joins the band of hunters to the extraordinary, mythic ending, this is an American classic about extreme violence. 1065465 book 1985 Blood Meridian: Or the Evening Redness in the West total:8195|5:4420|4:2149|3:1031|2:400|1:195| 8195 34784 12754 1524 5 25 false false Sat Apr 01 00:00:00 -0800 1995 Wed Sep 12 15:45:38 -0700 2007 Mon Oct 15 14:02:40 -0700 2007 Blood Meridian is unquestionably the most violent novel I’ve ever read. It’s also one of the best.

For those who would consider that a turn-off, I offer this caveat:
For the overwhelming majority of fiction that involves a lot of violence, the violence itself...more...]]> 2 14 false false Sat Sep 01 00:00:00 -0700 2007 Fri Sep 07 18:54:43 -0700 2007 Mon Sep 17 19:31:29 -0700 2007
This book is well written. If I'm a 11...more...]]> 3 16 false false Sat Dec 01 00:00:00 -0800 2007 Mon Nov 26 08:20:30 -0800 2007 Tue Dec 04 18:34:57 -0800 2007 The Crossing, McCarthy proves he can write about about the travels of a wolf in a poetic and engaging way. In Blood Meridian McCarthy writes about three or four wolves, calls them humans - those characters he bothers to name at all - and shows that with enough talent and ...more...]]> 5 9 false false Tue May 01 00:00:00 -0700 2007 Thu May 31 08:56:41 -0700 2007 Mon Jun 11 20:47:45 -0700 2007
There are two major aspects I'd like to touch on with this book:

1) Prose. McCarthy is one of those rare literary magicians who, l...more...]]> 5 7 false false Sun May 01 00:00:00 -0700 2005 Thu Aug 02 19:05:10 -0700 2007 Thu Aug 02 19:15:56 -0700 2007
Cormac McCarthy has a way with words that is inimitable and majestic. It seems as though every word is chosen with a purpose. ...more...]]> 5 7 false false Fri Jun 01 00:00:00 -0700 2007 Tue Jun 12 08:55:37 -0700 2007 Tue Jun 26 11:54:28 -0700 2007 more...]]> 5 6 false false Mon Sep 01 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Sat Aug 16 09:29:12 -0700 2008 Thu Nov 20 12:52:45 -0800 2008
Some claim to have read this book more than 30 times. I can see why. But this is my first Cormac McCarthy novel and I need a long rest. It took me three years before I had the energy to read Moby Dick a second time. Moby Dick and Ahab, an apt comparison as both novels are d...more...]]> 1 6 false false Sun Jun 08 18:04:09 -0700 2008 Sun Jun 08 18:20:00 -0700 2008 more...]]> 5 4 false false Mon Jul 31 00:00:00 -0700 2000 Mon Feb 11 06:25:12 -0800 2008 Mon Feb 11 06:25:12 -0800 2008
The whole idea of "the great american novel" really kind of misses the point because we have taken the original meaning of it and twisted it. The "great american novel" should probably t...more...]]> 5 3 false false Fri Jun 01 00:00:00 -0700 2007 Mon Jun 25 08:01:11 -0700 2007 Tue Jul 24 12:06:38 -0700 2007
"An epic novel of the violence and depravity that attended America's westward expansion, Blood Meridian brilliantly subverts the conventions of the Western novel and the mythology of the "wi...more...]]> 5 4 false false Sun Jul 01 00:00:00 -0700 2007 Tue May 22 19:17:59 -0700 2007 Mon Jul 30 09:19:52 -0700 2007 This book is so difficult to describe. Bare? Dismal? Hopeless? no, because those words imply ineffectiveness, which McCarthy's writing most certainly does not radiate.
The characters are at the same time distant and fully formed - we never see their thoughts, ye...more...]]> 2 3 false false Sun Aug 31 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Tue Jul 29 20:08:21 -0700 2008 Mon Sep 08 15:36:50 -0700 2008 Blood Meridian doesn’t have a lot of the indicators you get used to in reading a novel. By ‘indicators’ I mean the standards that readers come to rely on—plot, characters, etc. Though these aspects are intact, their path isn’t so obvious, so read w...more...]]> 5 2 false false Wed Mar 26 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Thu Feb 07 08:12:38 -0800 2008 Sun Mar 30 08:45:12 -0700 2008 more...]]> 2 5 false false Tue Aug 01 00:00:00 -0700 2006 Sun Jul 29 11:27:21 -0700 2007 Wed Aug 22 11:39:30 -0700 2007 more...]]> 4 2 false false Wed Feb 18 00:00:00 -0800 2009 Tue Feb 10 11:32:03 -0800 2009 Wed Feb 18 13:47:08 -0800 2009
This is a great piece of historical fiction. It mostly follows the Glanton Gang, who started off as scalphunters but ended up basically killing everyone that happened to cross their path. Easily the most violent novel I've ever read and the fa...more...]]> 5 3 false false Tue Oct 09 15:05:20 -0700 2007 Tue Oct 09 15:08:17 -0700 2007
I finished th...more...]]> 5 2 false false Sun Aug 23 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Sun Aug 23 05:49:49 -0700 2009 Sun Aug 23 15:40:02 -0700 2009 more...]]> 4 1 false false Tue Nov 10 00:00:00 -0800 2009 Fri Oct 23 17:00:56 -0700 2009 Fri Nov 13 11:35:26 -0800 2009 War of a Thousand Deserts...more...]]> 3 1 false false Mon Jun 01 18:26:40 -0700 2009 Sat Jul 18 18:23:21 -0700 2009 Blood Meridian. And at a little over three hundred pages, it took me a long time to read.

Maybe it w...more...]]> 5 3 false false Thu Dec 25 12:43:14 -0800 2008 Thu Feb 19 13:57:41 -0800 2009 more...]]> http://www.goodreads.com/book_link/follow/8?book_id=394535