From The Shelf

"BLOOD MERIDIAN" By Cormac McCarthy - This is a dark, dark western set in the west Texas desert during the early 1800's. The book follows the travels of "the kid," who is kind of a like a young man-with-no-name. We travel with "the kid" as he gets involved with military outfits, indians, mexican buffalo hunters, and all sorts of bandits and shady types. McCarthy paints a very dark and violent west here...even more so than anything you will find in the famed "LONESOME DOVE" series. Let me put it another way. If "LONESOME DOVE" is to Clint Eastwood or John Wayne,, then "BLOOD MERIDIAN" is to DEADWOOD.
I was blown away by McCarthy's "THE ROAD," so I was very excited to read this one. Here you'll find McCarthy's signature writing style of no punctuation (ala Faulkner.) But I didn't like this book as much as "THE ROAD." I still think it's pretty good and worth reading...especially for anyone who's a fan of westerns, but not as good in my opinion as "THE ROAD." The story jumps around so much from one character to another, and from one setting to another that you start to lose touch with the main character ("the kid.") He starts to become more of a bystander than a central character. However, the landscape painted here by McCarthy is incredible in its scale and detail. That is ultimately the most satisfying part of the book in my opinion. This is not the easiest of reads, which is probably why the movie version has been hung up in pre-production for a while now. Director Ridley Scott has been strongly rumored to be interested in directing the movie version, so we'll see if it happens someday.