Do The Idiot with us...

It'll be like the Musicbanter Book Club.

Just like the Oprah book club but without the narcissism...

http://i18.photobucket.com/albums/b1...ahcollage1.jpg

haha or the crappy choices.

I just finished The Road by Cormac McCarthy, and I'm feeling slightly ambivalent. It never really clicked for me and I don't really understand the piles of critical acclaim heaped on it.

The sparse prose is at times beautiful and profound, especially the final passage, but most of the time it just felt solid and workman like, not adding or detracting from the story.

The structure of the story was repetitive, and all of the descriptions of setting up camp blur into one. And I actually found the overwhelming bleakness and futility to be too much.

What saves it is the interaction between the man and boy, which is just perfect, swaying between touching and unsettling.

I think the primary flaw with the Road was the setting, McCarthy is incredible in the gothic western setting, but otherwise it's like wading through a swamp.

Nevertheless Blood Meridian is still one of the greatest novels I have ever read.

CA, I know you are into Beckett. I have never read any of his stuff and was wondering what novel I should start with. A lot of people are telling me Murphy, but I want to see what your recommendation would be.

I think Waiting for Godot would be the obvious place to start, of his novels I would say Watt.

Marsupial by Derek White, who happens to be the one-man wrecking crew behind Calamari Press. Support the small presses people! Please!

You know, I appreciate Blood Meridian but didn't really like it that much. It's beautifully written, but I just couldn't get into it. I want to read the Road because I figure it's more my thing.

Right now I'm reading Anthem of a Reluctant Prophet by Joanne Proulx right now. It's probably the type of book I need to break me out of my reading slump. Nothing too hard, with an interesting story. It would be death at this point to jump into something like James Joyce or War & Peace, etc.