Patrick read and liked Tim's review of 23 Minutes in Hell:

"From a literary standpoint, 23 Minutes in Hell was an abomination. The first part of the book deals with the authors descent into Hell. The narrative is peppered with biblical references as well as personal anecdotes in an attempt to get the reader...more From a literary standpoint, 23 Minutes in Hell was an abomination. The first part of the book deals with the authors descent into Hell. The narrative is peppered with biblical references as well as personal anecdotes in an attempt to get the reader to believe his story using very fuzzy 'logic'. The intent is clear: Do whatever it takes to stay out of Hell.
The middle of the book tells of his conversion to Christianity and the end is an appendix of scripture and references which seem to lend credence to his experience.
Bill's description of Hell are simply terrible and horrifying, which brings me to my main contention with this book and others like it (the warnings of 'deciding to go to hell'):
Why does Hell exist? According to the bible, the Christian God created it. Hell is a place of eternal suffering, pain and torture, designed for Satan and his angels (demons), yet the majority of mankind WILL end up there for doing nothing more than not believing in the very God that created this place! What kind of a monster would directly cause the ceaseless suffering of anything/anyonewith no chance of rest? Why not simply destroy the offender?
It is a sick and truly evil thing to cause suffering, and eternal suffering can only be conceived by a personification of such malignancy that anyone would do well to not have any contact with such a monster!
In addition, why the delay? If Hell was created for Satan and his minions, why not simply chuck them into Hell NOW??? If Satan is the cause of all sin, suffering, evil, etc, then what is the hold up? Even if mankind was not in danger of the flames (and according to Bill, there are indeed flames), consider how many have suffered, continue to suffer and will suffer!
Just do it already.
Bill attempts to answer some of the "tough" questions such as:
Do children go to Hell? Of course not, that would be ghastly, yet the Christian bible offers no such sanction. Bill uses quote mining and what he would call reasoning to lead the reader to the answer, but his conclusions are based on nothing more than a man realizing that not even his God would do such a thing. Of course not, the bible does not contain any stories of this God demanding that his followers kill children, or of bears mauling children that dare call his prophet "Old baldy". Of course not.
Mr Wiese hammers home the point that NO ONE escapes the fires of Hell, yet breaks his own declaration by...escaping Hell. Of course, Jesus was responsible since 'I AM' allowed Bill to suffer the terrors of Hell so that he could come back warn people. The Rich Man was not allowed this.....but Bill was.
Bill then states the location of Hell, and it is in the center of the Earth. It would seem then, that Hell is not a spiritual place, but the filming location of The Core.
23 Minutes in Hell is published by Charisma House, a Christian publishing company that has a wide variety of books on Hell, but the tract "Hell-Suppose It is True after all?" is of particular interest since is invokes Pascal's Wager....Bill tries to do this well, but I have this to say about deciding to follow a God that would cast you into Hell for not believing, so it would be better to believe than not:

Anyone that believes in a God in order to escape punishment is clearly demonstrating where is motives lie. If one merely wishes to escape the worst punishment after death, it would be better to be a Muslim, since their version of Hell is indeed worse than the Christian Hell. In any event, that is seriously flawed reasoning and if Hell exists in whole of in part as Bill and the other writers of the this subject, than I WANT to be as far away as possible from the monster than created such a place! Kissing up to such a being is an indication that one lacks integrity, courage and, in the opinion of this reviewer, an intellect. Allowing fear to dictate a belief system is as best irresponsible.
I have shelved this book along next to Bob Larson, Mike Warnke and Rebecca Brown. I would entitle the shelf 'Comedy' if it weren't so damned sad.(less) "

Patrick read and liked Robin's review of The Road:

"So I generally don't hate books - Recently when joining a face2face club they asked which book I disliked the most - and had no answer. Well I want to thank Cormac McCarthy for giving me something to be able to put there.

Having heard the...more So I generally don't hate books - Recently when joining a face2face club they asked which book I disliked the most - and had no answer. Well I want to thank Cormac McCarthy for giving me something to be able to put there.

Having heard the buzz about this book and having seen the plethora of positive reviews, I felt compelled to write my own if only to be that voice of reason in a wilderness of pretentious insanity.

Cormac’s McCarthy’s The Road, I can honestly say, is the worst book I have ever read. I am stunned to find such a critical following for a novel that is so clearly bad that I have yet to meet a flesh and blood person who does not hate it, or cannot, even after the most mild inquires, explain its appeal beyond the latent thought that they “ought” to like it. To do otherwise would mark them as uncultured and ignorant. Modern art had Duchamp's toilet, and now literature has its own case of the emperor’s new clothes in, The Road.

What sets this novel apart from all others in its genre of ill-conception, is the totality of its failure. There is nothing good that can be said of it. Some virtue can be found in every book, as in the old adage—“…but she has a nice personality.” The Road breaks this rule, and soundly. From the plot and characters to the writing style and even the cover design, the book is abysmally uninspired and a black hole of skill.

Much has been made of the writing quality. Alan Cheuse, of the Chicago Tribune, and book commentator for NPR calls it “…his huge gift for language.” Let’s look at that for a moment. It is universally accepted that the first few sentences of any novel are the most crucial—the words which a writer labors over the most to get them just right. Here are the first two sentences of The Road:

“When he woke in the woods in the dark and the cold of the night he’d reach out to touch the child sleeping beside him. Nights dark beyond darkness and the days more gray each one than what had gone before.”

I once presented these two sentences to an amateur writer’s forum and asked their opinion. Several members politely replied that the sentences were badly in need of work. Not only were they not grammatically correct, but they were awkward, confusing, used several unnecessary words and had all the rhythm and pacing of a dog with four broken legs. Nights dark beyond darkness, has got to rank up there with, it was a dark and stormy night. This is not at all an isolated example. It is merely the beginning—literally. Other laudable narrative sentences include: “The Hour.” “Of a sudden he seemed to wilt even further.” “A lake down there.”

Lest you think I am selectively picking the worst, here is the passage Mr. Cheuse used in his own review as an example of genius: “tottering in that cold autistic dark with his arms outheld for balance while the vestibular calculations in his skull cranked out their reckonings. An old chronicle. To seek out the upright. No fall but preceded by a declination. He took great marching steps into the nothingness, counting them against his return.” What McCormac is describing here is that it is dark and the man can’t see where he is going. The author is clearly a master of communication.

Let’s also pause to consider his brilliance of dialog, and his mastery of the monosyllable conversation that make the screenplay dialog of Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger on par with Shakespeare. Nearly every conversation has the word “Okay,” which appears so often I began to think it was a pun, like a ventriloquist routine. One might conclude McCarthy is attempting to reflect a realistic vernacular into his work, except that the conversations are so stilted and robotic, as to lack even the faintest aroma of realism. There is no slang, no halted speech, no rambling. It is Dragnet.

First dialog in the book:
I ask you something? Yes. Of course. Are we going to die? Sometime. Not now. And we’re still going south. Yes. So we’ll be warm. Yes. Okay. Okay what? Nothing. Just okay. Go to sleep. Okay.

You’ll note that I did not use quotes in the above excerpt. That is because neither does McCarthy. There are no quotes anywhere in the book, nor are there any tags designating the speaker, which manages to successfully make determining who is speaking quite a dilemma at times. Moreover, McCarthy never provides names to his characters this forces him to use the pronoun “he” frequently which very often leaves the reader bewildered as to whether he is referring to the father or the boy.

McCarthy doesn’t stop with quotes. He rarely uses commas or apostrophes. It doesn’t appear as if he is against contractions as he uses the non-word, “dont” quite frequently. Nor is he making the statement that he can write a whole book without punctuation as he does, on rare occasions, use a comma or an apostrophe, (as you can see from the dialog segment I listed above,) as if he is going senile and merely forgot. As the lack of most of the necessary punctuation’s only result is to make it harder to read, I can only conclude that McCarthy, or his editor are the most lazy people I’ve ever heard of—although I am certain no credible editor ever saw this book. If they had I am certain we would have heard about the suicide in the papers.

One might overlook the shortcomings of writing skill if the novel’s foundation was an excellent story. Sadly, this is not the case. Not that it lacks an excellent plot—it lacks a plot. Often times writers anguish over distilling the plot of a novel into a few sentences that might fit on the back of a book cover. It is often impossible to clearly convey all that a book is in such a short span. The Road does not suffer this. Instead I would imagine that if it were possible to put this book in a microwave and evaporate all the extraneous words all you would have left is one sentence: A boy and his father travel south in a post-apocalyptic United States, then the father dies. I wonder if the blurb writer for the, The Road, realized he was also providing a spoiler for the novel so comprehensive, no one need read the book.

What the book lacks in plot it clearly makes up for in even less characterization. The father and the boy—that is about as much characterization as you will get. McCarthy doesn’t even provide names from which readers might glean some associative characteristics. We know the boy is afraid, because he says so approximately every four pages, always with the same robotic level of emotional intensity, backing it up with his many reasons, regrets and concerns as in the passage: I am scared. Likewise, the father is equally a pot bubbling over with emotional angst and frustration so vividly expressed in his response: I know. I’m sorry.

We might as well burn all our copies of Grapes of Wrath now that we have this tour de force.

As amazing as it is, with only an eggshell of plot, McCarthy manages to run afoul of logic. The boy and his father come across shelters packed with food and water, and yet the father insists they move on. Why? Because they must keep moving so as to avoid encountering others. Clearly staying in one place is the best plan to avoid meeting others, hermit do it all the time. Yes, other people might wander into you, but you double that equation if you too are roaming. The only argument for pressing on with the journey is to find others.

I am certain I am being too kind here, but given that this is a Pulitzer Prize winning, Oprah Pick, National Bestseller, I don’t want to ruffle too many feathers. Of course, Duchamp's toilet (Fountain) was once voted "the most influential modern artwork of all time".(less) "

Patrick read and liked Chris's review of The Road:

"I’m trying to find solace in the fact that I’m probably not the only one to be humiliatingly hoodwinked into taking the time to read Cormac McCarthy’s much-celebrated yawn-fest “The Road”, although this hardly makes this bamboozling somethi...more I’m trying to find solace in the fact that I’m probably not the only one to be humiliatingly hoodwinked into taking the time to read Cormac McCarthy’s much-celebrated yawn-fest “The Road”, although this hardly makes this bamboozling something to boast about. In spite of the fact approximately three-fourths of the world seemed to readily embrace this as worthy fare, I managed to keep my distance for some time, mainly through ignorance of the general plot of the book and my usual stubborn reluctance to blindly jump off a bridge with the masses. I should have obeyed my gut instinct and remained one of the few spared the tedium of “The Road”, but then I had to go and actually examine a copy from a carefully-arranged pile resembling some kaleidoscopic, symmetrical form that some unfortunate, underpaid bookslut had to labor over for hours to create, and noticed that not only did this win the Pulitzer Prize, but happened to be a post-apocalyptic tale, and nothing stirs my loins nearly as vigorously. I’d even had it suggested by one of my fellow goodreaders, and after brief contemplation as to whether to waste my money on this alleged masterpiece or another box of nitrous cartridges, I decided that it was time to see what all the fuss was about (regarding “The Road”, I think I can understand the allure of the EZ Whip cream chargers, especially when you’ve got one of those bigass punch-ball balloons).

I sat in a numbed stupor while I read this, completely baffled as to how the hell this managed not only to win awards of great prestige, but, more importantly, just how it managed to be a commercial success with the ordinary reader. I’m almost interested to hear why someone might have actually enjoyed “The Road”, in which McCarthy somehow managed to make boring the concept of post-apocalyptic America. While I usually happen to be a fan of the genre, I found this to be everything which I don’t desire within that intriguing realm. At this point, I’m obviously begging for someone to come along and tell me that I ‘didn’t get it’, and probably point out that I’m a moron for good measure. I’m not denying that these are certainly valid arguments, but convincing me that I didn’t like this book is going to be impossible, my cheeky little friend.

So, what did I get from “The Road”, which stupefies me with its status as a #1 bestseller and Pulitzer-winning tour de force? Several things, all of them sucky; a whole lot of repetitive and boring conversation and redundant let’s-trek-towards-the-coast plodding, a lot of stupidass and harebrained compoundwords, and an insipid amalgam of fiftyword paragraphs that seldom accomplished anything as far as entertaining me as a reader.

Here’s the story in a nutshell, for anyone who might be inexplicably reading this without having read the book; probably because they were wise enough to invest in the EZ Whip instead, and are now dicking around with their iTunes trying to find the song that best complements that flanging sound in their head. Some sort of catastrophe has befallen planet Earth, and I have to admit I was pretty interested to find out the nature of this calamity, but McCarthy decides to keep that a secret for some reason beyond my grasp, maybe as the highlight of “The Road 2: Thoroughfare”. Ok, I can dig it, whatever it was, I know that it had no trouble fucking up Earth’s weak and fragile little blue ass. Score; Unexplained Devastating Event 1, Earth 0. Does it really matter what might have happened, seeing as all it resulted in was the end of almost all life as we know it? Actually, yeah, the lack of any sort of input regarding the origin of this chain of events does suck, and badly. Score: Utter Buffoonishness 1, Cormac McCarthy 0.

In the wake of, well, whatever cataclysmic shit happened, we’ve got a father and son struggling to survive in the resulting aftermath, and things aren’t very promising for this enterprising duo, as whatever wiped out the inhabitants of planet earth also eradicated not only all plant and animal life, but in a shocking display of sheer spite also managed to do away with quotation marks, colons, semicolons, and most hyphens. Survivors of this worldwide holocaust are few and far between: scattered bands of humans that have largely resorted to thuggishness and cannibalism for lack of other hobbies or nutrition, a few mushrooms, and question marks, periods, and a wily subset of apostrophes have managed to escape extermination. The father and son have managed to eke out a regrettable existence for an unknown number of years, and the approaching winter promises to be outrageously cold, so they make way for an unnamed southern coastline, where I can only presume they're expecting to encounter something more accommodating.

Their journey is perhaps the most ridiculously boring shit I’ve ever read. They push a shopping cart along with their scant supplies while alternately stomping through ash and sleeping in ditches. Once in a while they encounter another survivor, each meeting completely preposterous and without substance. They ransack homes and forage for food, they abandon the weak and feeble, they ramble incessantly, engaging in snippets of pointless conversation, usually about how they cannot give up, as they are ‘carrying the fire’. I’m assuming that ‘the fire’ is the inextinguishable hope for mankind, a barely flickering light personified in the child, or maybe the fact that any chance of repopulating may depend on their ash-coated and unwashed swinging schlongs, who the hell knows, the ‘fire’ could be their undiminished belief in god which they’ll impart on the cannibal savages running unchecked when not feasting on fetus.

That’s it. Seriously, that’s the story, and I’ve long since abandoned any attempt to discover what all the hype surrounding this supposed ‘story’ is.

Despite my generally low opinion of our collective taste as a species, I found myself shocked that “The Road” was deemed favorable by so many. But what I really can’t wrap my head around is the critical acclaim, which applauds this for reasons I’ll never understand, and sincerely hope the critics don’t either. I found the storytelling utterly regrettable and lacking in all possible aspects, once in a while McCarthy bizarrely waxed poetic, and he also made the completely unforgivable mistake of mentioning how the ‘sun went around the earth’, which, if intended to be literal, at least offers an explanation as to why the planet is becoming so inhospitable. Otherwise, all Cormac has to offer is a bunch of really short, uninteresting sentences, banal murmurings between father and son, and a whole lot of tedium. I might almost be impressed that on several occasions McCarthy busted out some word which I’ve previously never seen before in my life (woad and siwash come to mind, both forever burnt in my brain as examples of meaningless gibberish), but when the use of these words is considered next to the rest of the prose, composed of rudimentary language, all it called to mind was the disheartening suspicion that McCarthy stumbled across these relics from some Word-Of-The-Day vocabulary-enhancing calendar, making them seem improbably forced into the story:

June 14th: WOAD: n, some absurd, obscure shit.

“Hmmmm,” Cormac ponders this treasure, “I may have to have the protagonists come across a load of woad.” He chuckles idiotically. “A load. Heh. Of woad. Heh heh.”

While the Woad Incident was bad enough, McCarthy also uses ‘wonky’. Christ, the last time I heard wonky used was in Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, coming from Master Blaster. This made for a pretty fitting connection between the two, both being pieces of post-apocalyptic poodle piddle. After getting an unsavory sampling of the author’s propensity for rarely-seen words, I was half expecting to see rampike, which would have actually worked in the context of the story on countless occasions, but apparently that one was included in Roget’s Word-Of-The-Day and our man McCarthy was given the Merriam-Webster last Christmas.

Now I’m just nit-picking, for lack of anything else to comment on, since this was so devoid of action, intrigue, or anything remotely thought-provoking.
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