Cannonball Read 11

Sticking it to Cancer One Book at a Time

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“He knew only that the child was his warrant. He said: If he is not the word of God God never spoke.”

The Road by Cormac McCarthy

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This book sat on my shelf for a decade because I was too scared to read it. It’s great, everyone said. It’s great, but it’s heavy. It is both of those things. It’s also, unexpectedly, the best book on fatherhood I’ve ever read. More on that later. Plotwise, The Road is not paving (haha) any new terrain: An apocalyptic event occurred within the last decade, and the survivors are trying to eke out an existence. The main threat isn’t the scarred earth – it’s the other survivors. The author focuses on a man and his son, and their journey to the […]

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9/9/2018 's CBR10 Review No:59 |

There is no forgiveness. For women. A man may lose his honor and regain it again. But a woman cannot. She cannot.

The Border Trilogy: All the Pretty Horse, The Crossing; Cities of the Plain by Cormac McCarthy

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CBR10Bingo – AND SO IT BEGINS and THIS IS THE END So this series of books came out in the 1990s and sort of represents a significant shift in Cormac McCarthy’s writing or more so signals the closing of the second phase of his writing and he moved toward the final section (depending on how much more he publishes — he’s pretty old). The first phase is more or less represented through his Tennessee novels. These novels are (simplistically) defined by working within the Southern Gothic sub-genre, or perhaps thinking through the novels as the “grotesque” or even “carnivalesque” to […]

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8/13/2018 's CBR10 Review No:303 |

The Road redux

The Road by Cormac McCarthy

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I read this novel when it first came out in 2006 or so. I was teaching for my first year in Baltimore and I read this novel is my bare-ass room in a basement apartment in Baltimore. I had recently read and reviewed No Country for Old Men, and so the spare details of the novel and it’s subject was a lot to take. This time around I listened to the audiobook while I cleaned out my gross ass basement. Like super gross. Bugs. Spidewebs. Muck. Dirt. All that. And here I am listening to descriptions of bodies in basements, not […]

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7/31/2017 's CBR9 Review No:318 |

“They bred dogs for everything else…why didnt they breed them to live longer?”

The Dog Stars by Peter Heller

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Yet another post-apocalyptic novel set in the not too distant future. I know. It’s like every fifth book written these days is set during the end of humanity. I suppose that says something about the fatalism of America in a post 9/11, post-truth world. But this isn’t the Walking Dead. There isn’t a zombie in sight, in fact. The Dog Stars is more The Thin Red Line meets The Road. It’s a somber reflection of the end of the world, at times haunting and told in a lyrical but sparse prose. If you were to bottle the essence of a Terrence Malick and […]

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3/10/2017 's CBR9 Review No:17 |

McCarthy almost broke me with this one

Outer Dark by Cormac McCarthy

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Cormac McCarthy is an impressive writer, but reading his books often feels like jumping into the middle of a disturbing nightmare. I’ve been reading through his works, but I don’t read any more than one per year for my own sanity. This time it was probably more my state of mind, but Outer Dark (1968) turned out to be one of his more disturbing books. I’m going to take a nice long break before I read another. I think I only have Suttree left now anyway. Outer Dark focuses on a brother and sister living in abject poverty somewhere in the Appalachians at the turn […]

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12/8/2016 's CBR8 Review No:53 |

Cormac McCarthy is a thief of joy.

Cities of the Plain by Cormac McCarthy

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Now that school is over, and I’ve got a project wrapped up for the next few weeks, I have some free time in front of me. So I’ve been reading like a madwoman. Of course, I’m now behind several reviews, so I’ll hope to play catch-up today and tomorrow. Now that graduation is over, I’ll have some downtime to do that! Cities of the Plain is the last in the Border Trilogy. Cormac McCarthy unites John Cole Grady from All the Pretty Horses and Billy Parham from The Crossing into this last glimpse at a world that is disappearing. Both […]

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5/18/2015 's CBR7 Review No:72 |

Nothing says, “Hey, let’s make you depressed!” like Cormac McCarthy killing off characters.

The Crossing by Cormac McCarthy

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This Cannonball has been really odd, because it feels like I’m switching between Cormac McCarthy and Barbara Pym–two authors who could not be more different from one another. I decided to switch back to McCarthy, because apparently I HATE MYSELF. Good lord, somebody has issues with animals. In all fairness, my sister warned me about the bad things that happen in The Crossing, so it wasn’t like I wasn’t prepared. I believe someone here on CBR (I want to say narfna) warned me, too. But yeah, every time bad things happen to an animal, a little part of my soul […]

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5/11/2015 's CBR7 Review No:71 |

In which I admit my addiction to Cormac McCarthy…

The Road by Cormac McCarthy

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I know a LOT of people who have read The Road and were thoroughly traumatized by it. Several advised me to wait and read it when it was sunny outside, so I wouldn’t be depressed afterwards. I did follow that advice, but I also read two McCarthy books that did not coincide with sunshine. And, frankly, I found Blood Meridian to be such a bloodbath that The Road, as bleak as it is, cannot even compare. I’ve concluded that The Road is the most traumatizing if you were a Cormac McCarthy virgin before you read it. And knowing what I […]

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4/1/2015 's CBR7 Review No:49 |


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