The first book in The Border Trilogy.

Set in West Texas in the years following World War II. A grandfather dies, parents flounder in their own worries and desires and the boy, John Grady Cole, is cut off from the only life - ranching - he ever wanted. So, with his friend Lacy, he decides to go to Mexico.

I am running a Spiral Ring for the three books of "The Border Trilogy" plus "Blood Meridian", all by Cormac McCarthy. I will read them myself when they return.

1 - All the Pretty Horses
2 - The Crossing
3 - Cities of the Plain
4 - Blood Meridian: Or, The Evening Redness in the West

The running order for this spiral is:
abrokenstarr
reetpetite
beebarf
caro1
kittiwake

THIS RING IS NOW COMPLETE.

This arrived in the post this morning along with a penguin classic.

Thankyou for sharing kittiwake!

I struggled a little with this book - I found it pretty hard going. Spanish is peppered through the book and is often not translated, which I found frustrating. I also read it in tandem with The Gunslinger, which is a similar, but different book. I'm going to carry on with the series as it has received such high acclaim, but I wouldn't if it hadn't.

Sent in the post to Reetpetite this morning.

Thanks abrokenstarr. I hope to be starting it soon.

The style took a while to get used to. People were referred to as 'her' or 'him' instead of by name so it took a while to work out if he was talking about a person or a horse. He certainly knows a lot about horses which went completely over my head. I was a bit disappointed that the Spanish wasn't translated, I felt I was getting the gist but not the full story.
Anyway after saying that I did like it, quite a lot happened. The poor people shared what little they had with the boys so it was uplifting in a way.
The love bit, I'm not sure about, it seemed unlikely, but the parting was well written.

I've PMed Beebarf about passing it on.

Posted today to Beebarf.
Enjoy!

Received yesterday, but was in a dash to get out to my yoga class as I was late home from work.

Thank you reetpetite and kittiwake!

The purpose of writing books is to tell other people a story - ie to communicate. If one cannot do that, if one cannot implant the story in the reaser's consciousness then I would consider that author to have failed.

And McCarthy I think fails in a big way. I'm sure that the story he is trying to tell is actually a good one, with interesting characters and atmospheric settings but I can't actually tell, because I can't get past the stylistic conceits employed by the author.

There is a reason punctuation exists and persists. It is because it makes written work make sense to the reader, and helps convey meaning. It is not an intrusion when done properly, it is an essential. Even in speech, we automatically punctuate.

And McCarthy's abandonment of much punctuation and convention - speech marks, some indication of who is speaking, commas, apostrophes in contracted words (although I noticed a "you'd" slipped in - slipshod editing!) - completly obscured the story for me, and made me abandon the book very few pages in, it was so annoying and difficult to work through.

Disappointing.

Will take to the Sheffield Meet to give to Caro1

Passed to me by Beebarf at the Sheffield meet. Only another week until half-term when I'll get some reading time!
Finished some time ago but didn't get round to journalling. I really quite enjoyed this and look forward to reading the rest of the trilogy. The curious punctuation (or lack of it) and untranslated Spanish phrases didn't bother me as much it it did other readers and I was able to immerse myself in the story without difficulty. Thanks for sharing kittiwake.

Caro1 returned this book to me at today's Nottingham BookCrossing meeting.

It's going to go back on my TBR pile.

RELEASE NOTES:

To be released at Saturday's Nottingham BookCrossing meet.

If no-one takes it, I'll leave it on the bookshelves.

Caught this book at Costa Coffee Nottingham,when read it will go on its travels to who knows where

RELEASE NOTES:

FOYER HOTEL FLAMINGO BENIDORM