I read his Blood Meridian last year. It made me very thankful to not be living in the wild west. Wikipedia says The Road has a romanticism that's not in his bleak other works. Also, it looks like it's the first book in a trilogy. After The Time Traveler's Wife, maybe I'll check this one out too. Thanks!

I remember when I first read Cormac McCarthy, wondering how I would have graded him if he were a student in my class (I used to teach). I have to admit, I might have busted him for punctuation! (In my defense, I do think you need to know the rules to break them intelligently--at least, most of the time. O geez, now I sound like a lawyer.) I haven't read THe Road, will look for it.

Finished McCarthy's The Road the other day. Although it's not exactly running related, it is a journey book, one that leaves a reader appreciating everything that we have and take for granted. It's also a cautionary tale of where we might be going. I hear that a movie's in the works, and that they're filming in the badlands near Pittsburgh. I could have pointed them to a few wastelands near Scranton as well, but these are my super-secret running spots of desolation. In several ways The Road is the opposite of Kerouac's On the Road, but they are equally melancholy.

I LOVE me some McCarthy. Blood Meridian is my favorite, but I liked Pretty Horses a lot too--it's more lighthearted (relatively speaking of course) than his other stuff. I read The Road last year, I'm glad I did, and I never want to read it again. I'd kick puppies to be able to write like him.