Fiction Literature Books

Gabriel Garcia Marquez has written many novels over the years, but I have had the privilege to read only two. This book is written in the style of magical realism, so you have to be very open minded about the creative and surrealistic characters. It's a wonderful, classic book from a great Latin American author.

100 years of solitude is an extremely well-written novel. The town of Macondo is personified through the Buendia family. It was the Buendias who founded the town and their lineage that is followed in the story. The town (like the Buendia family) is a desolate and solitary place that rapidly matures until it is destroyed. From the founding of the town, to the installment of the banana company, to the town's destruction, Macondo is destined to remain in solitude. Like the Buendias, the town never really reaches its full potential. Although the novel is extremely graphic and somewhat depressing at parts, from a literary point of view, 100 years of solitude is a fantastic novel.

I checked this book out of the library after reading rave review after rave review.

I wanted to like it, I really did, but I honestly cannot understand all the high marks. To me the book reads as if it were written by a 6th-grader. Characterization and storyline aside, the language itself is what turned me off. It seemed stilted, contrived, lacking in fluidity, and devoid of any real color; an amateurish effort at best.

Perhaps this reads better in its native tongue, but the translation I read was atrocious. I promptly returned it to the library, shooting it soundly down the return bin with a force that it so richly deserved.

And fascinating illusions don't let me go. I loved the book to the bone, to the heart of this exotic village and its psycho people. I was mesmerized by the literature and captured by this uniquely masterpiece of fiction and fact, mixed in a bowl of madness.

I'm one of those who found One Hundred Years of Solitude fascinating and enjoyable. The style definitely made it for me; Marquez's prose is misty and mythic in a beautifully descriptive way. I never lost interest in the story. It's told in an unusual manner, more like an oral history or legend than a written work. After reading it, I could see why Marquez is called the "South American Faulkner"; the style in One Hundred Years of Solitude can only be compared to a book like The Sound and the Fury. I have called it misty, but it's deeper than that. The haze over Macondo is analogous to the haze of memory itself. I was thoroughly satisfied and amazed by the book. For me to attempt further description of its marvelous intricacies would be to rob you of the full joy of reading it.

I was disappointed, though, when I sampled some of Marquez's other works. In Evil Hour failed to hold my attention at all, and the only novel that has even come close was Love in the Time of Cholera. Marquez was a good author and journalist, but he didn't have the consistency to maintain the style he achieved in One Hundred Years of Solitude. I would wholeheartedly recommend OHYoS to anyone interested in this book or this author, but I would simultaneously warn him or her not to expect to find another book like it. Perhaps it's best that way.

The book was in excellent condition. Looked brand new. Delivery was quick. I was exremely pleased.

Tedious and ponderous. Very poorly written. Simplistic plot with no development of characters. The story was not well integrated into the historical time period, and in fact, seemed mostly unconnected to it. The characters were presented within a 21st century pychological context. It simply is not possible to understand the story or characters unless it was placed in the correct cultural context. Putting 21st century charaters in skins among livestock does not make them even remotely historically authentic. The only historical item I gleaned was that women sat on straw during their periods.

This is a beautifully written novel, and it does an amazing job of transporting the reader back in time to a completely foreign culture, time, place, and way of life. The characters are all incredibly rich and detailed (yes, even the male characters, I think they were all as intricate as the female ones), and the story is deeply moving.
I was always disappointed whenever I would read the Bible and find that the stories mostly focused on the men; while the women would be off to the side, completely silent, often only mentioned in regards to the sons they had borne. This book turns the Old Testament narratives inside out, and describes the familiar stories from the womens' point of view, while celebrating the mystery and wonder of life.
A note for Christians, especially those who criticize the book because it doesn't completely follow what the Bible says regarding the events...this is a work of historical fiction written by a Jewish woman, and I don't think it was ever meant to be a work of Christian fiction. Take this book for what it is, an exploration of the historical period and the relationships between ancient women. The Bible never says that Dinah embraced her father's God.
I always wondered what happened to Dinah after the events in Shechem, and this book followed her story to the end of her life in ways I never expected. Diamant has a rich imagination, and is a skilled writer.

it's about time that orthodoxy in all its forms crumbles.

here is part of the crumbling of the weak mortar.

love it.

the overly patriarchic impulse needs it's own tent to cower in.

This is a fantastic imagining of the lives of women during the time period of the Book of Genesis.

It demonstrates how women can carve out a slice of power in a patriarchal society-- even though their roles were strictly defined by convention, that convention also allowed for them to play an important, if secondary role.

No one who reads this would think that it's ok for women to be subjugated in the manner that the book portrays, but it is an inspiration to see how the characters in the book handle the cards they've been dealt.

The book is extremely nuanced, exploring all manner of familial and societal issues while maintaining an intensely personal focus. The setting is so richly detailed, and so exotic, that it warrants the effort of reading by itself.

The writing itself has a matter-of-fact, flattish tone, which I found to be quite enjoyable. It wasn't as lean and fast-paced as it could have been, but it did succeed in evoking the "flavor" of the bible, which is a neat trick when writing a modern novel.

As a white american atheist male, I suspect I'm not the target audience for this "biblical chick-flick on paper," but I enjoyed every page, and wholeheartedly recommend it to anyone who enjoys heady, thoughtful books.

Okay, so all sorts of historical details are altered for the sake of character drama, but so what? It does not change the fact that this is one heck of a great play that offers it all: romance, betrayal, psychology, murder, and more, all set in a sleepy little Puritan town obsessed with witches that has become the victim of the "games" of a few young girls.

While I would hardly recommend it to someone going for deep facts of the Salem Witch Trials, this still draws on historical characters and does an excellent job of portraying them as real people. You feel for them, even the ones you hate.

"The Crucible" is well-named as the pot that heats everything up, and Miller takes minor events and shows how they become the tragedy that was the witch trials.

This is an incredibly powerful and important story that teaches messages as the drama entertains.

The Crucible by Arthur Miller is a great book to read with a mother-daughter book club. It provides an outlet to talk about issues the girls are covering in school, and to find out about how their perspectives differ from those of their moms. The issues of witchcraft and socially sanctioned violence against a targeted group seem eerily relevant to some of the things going on in our world today. This book challenged all of us to think about the most important things in our lives and what we're willing to sacrifice to achieve a higher cause.

Daughter needed it for a project for an accelerated class. It came in time and she was able to complete her assignments with a new book.

I really enjoyed reading this classic tale. I found it interesting from an historical and literary point of view. It forces you to think about very real moral dilemmas, like what you might or might not give your life for.

On my walk through the LoA edition of Arthur Miller plays I bypass The Enemy of the People, the Ibsen adaptation, which I think is a waste of everyone's time, and go straight to the Crucible, which I had never read, nor watched on stage or screen. Very odd. It is a truly gripping piece of modern classic stage writing.
Of course AM needed to educate us always, so this story is not just a story about the witch trials of Salem, when perfectly harmless people, including some citizens of standing in the community, got identified as witches and hanged for it. (Which somehow looks like progress over the burnings in Europe.)
No, this is generally about fundamentalism and totalitarianism and theocracy, and more specifically about McCarthy and I wouldn't be surprised if it was also about the Ayatollah Khomeini, whatever you may say regarding anachronisms, and the Taliban. Let's not forget the Cultural Revolution of China.
If I seem to mock the play just a little bit, I haven't made up my mind yet, not quite. There is something strangely wrong in the tone of the dialogues. Can't quite nail it. Anachronistic for sure; is that all? Have to think about it.
The message that AM put into his morality tale is that power and property interests are behind the maddest manifestations of disinterestedness and righteousness. That was sure true in the other historical witch hunts that we know about. Whether it is an accurate reflection of the Salem case, I do not know. (I will definitely look for the DVD and give DDL a chance for redemption in my eyes.)

I say complicated because of the language that's found throughout the novel. The entire book is written in first person, and we focus on Alex, whose language will be really hard for some people to get into. But if you read it the second or third time, then you'll understand what's happening and what the characters are trying to say.

Anthony Burgess's philosophical novel is a must-read. It deals with modern society and government experiments. Basically, the book discusses the idea of driving a criminal away from crime, but "at what cost?" Many scenes involving rape and violence are especially disturbing (I imagine that Stanley Kubrick's film version is just as gruesome). And the government testing scenes are fairly frightening. The last chapter of this book (the 21st) is now restored, as it has been omitted the first time this was published in the States. It's somewhat controversial, but I won't give you the details, you'll have to read it yourself.

A-

A Clockwork Orange is a great read for anyone interested in a unique and compelling story of a personal battle of a violent teen with his surroundings and inner-conscience. A Clockwork Orange draws in the simple reader with its raw brutality and violence and leaves them greatly affected with the social implications of this literary masterpiece.

Regarding the Russian-English slang spoken by the protagonist, Alex, and his fellow hoodlums; it's initially hard to comprehend, but after the first chapter, one should have no problem reading it.

This book is more than just a thriller - it also touches on the psychological and social aspects that are prevalent in today's society.

In response to one of other reviewers,

That, what you call "made-up slang" is a language called dsat which is more or less Russian words written using the English alphabet. "Horror Show" for example translates to "good", because if you say horrorshow in one word really fast, someone who understands Russian will likely think you are saying the word "good" in Russian. This language idiosyncrasy alone makes a good point of good vs. evil, which is one of the focuses of the book, where horror show actually means good.

I don't like to believe that this is a study, the author is obviously a genius.

I'm glad you enjoyed the book, and hopefully the film. A must read for anyone, especially those interested to be philosophically stimulated.

Don't forget, many of the ideas in this book are influenced by Nietzsche.

This book is very good. It hass undertones as to the situations that are presented in society now even though it was written so long ago. The disregard of youth for the laws that are put in place to protect them and ourselves leads to their inability to function in society and their eventual decomposition to vagrants that put weight on the already weighted prison system. Upon finding a seemingly just punishment and solution the spin doctors find a way not only to persecute the "afflicted" youth but also use it to defeat their own enemies. Very good book however the slang that he was praised for using and developing was very difficult to get into. It actually made me not want to read it at first but getting into it and eventually learning it allowed me to really enjoy the read.

I can see how people would find this book to be neat. It's defintely unique. I didn't enjoy it, though. I am a reader who likes to get swept onto the page and become the protagonist's shadow, and with this book's inventive language I found that impossible. I could never get into a flow because too often (every paragraph for at least the first seven chapters) I had to stop and figure out what the protagonist was trying to say. I nearly put it down for good when I got about halfway through it. I'm glad I pushed on, though, because the last third of the book--the point in which I had finally figured out enough of the protagonist's language to not have to work so hard--was pretty good.

If you like Shakespeare, you'll probably like this book.

Interpreter of Maladies

I was interested in Jhumpa Lahiri's books because I read some good reviews of them. I also like books about different cultures. At first, I was dissabpointed in these stories. I liked the way she developed the characters and the settings, but the first several stories seemed too tragic. At the end, we were left with little sense of hope for the character's future. The later two or three stories in the book are better. The give you a sense of the lives of the people and also the reader gets a sense that things are not perfect, but there is at least a chance that the character will find some happiness. I would reccommend this book just for the fascinating writing style and character development.

To give a frame of reference, some of my favorite authors are Margaret Atwood and Barbara Kingsolver. I have searched and searched for another introspective, intelligent, strong female voice, and finally I have found it. I plan on buying every one of her books and keeping them forever. In this book alone, my wisdom cache has increased, certainly the mark of a great book.

This is one of the best collections of short stories that I have read. Many of her characters stayed with me long after I finished the book. I also enjoyed "The Namesake" and can't wait to read her latest book.

I'm a fan of Lahiri's and enjoyed Namesake as well. Check it out for yourself and I'm sure you will agree. I too am tired of reading stories of the "Indianness" of being Indian. So as an Indian I appreciate this.

The book was very well written, but I found it to be a little too dark and macabre for my tastes - not exactly something you'd want to curl up and sink into...

"The Invisible Man" is a classic novel which uses the first person narrator, the invisible man, to move the reader through various types of racism, dishonesty, and deceptiveness which a black man in the 1950's would encounter. The more the invisible man is used by others, the more invisible he becomes and the less self-identity he possesses. He allows himself, unwittingly, to be used by others, both black and white, for their own purposes. He gains nothing from dealing with these characters and actually loses more and more of his self-worth, thus creating his invisibility as a person. It is only when he begins to realize that he must define his own self-worth and not allow others to dictate to him or define his identity that his "invisibility" begins to diminish. The idea that "white is right, white has might", symbolized by the paint factory, was the ideology of those times. Segregation was practiced and blacks were looked down upon as ignorant, nameless members of the American culture. They were invisible citizens in a white-dominated culture. The author wanted to send the message to readers that America was founded upon the philosophy of individual freedom in all areas and that nothing was gained by forcing people to conform to society's standards. By conforming, individual identity is lost and invisibility as a person increases. "I am not invisible that nobody can see me. I am invisible because they choose not to see me." That was the truth the invisible man finally learned. From that truth, he was able to begin defining his own identity and not be the invisible man in his own eyes.

This novel is a classic and a must read for any one, especially any American, of any color, race, or religion. Although it was written several decades ago, much of it still applies today.

This is book is far to good to be filed in one category, and unfortunately categorization is probably hurting the range of it's audience. What we have here is a great tome of African American literature to be sure, but the work far transends ethnicities in the importance of it's message and the social commentary found within. Granted it is about a young African American male trying to gain recognician as a man, if nothing else, in a society where identity [...] merely a fascade for social and professional purposes. This book is as well written and more developed than many of the existentialist literature spoon fed to us in school. I have to admit I felt a bit cheated that I stumbled on this book accidentally in the Black History section of a book store, sandwiched between Douglas and King.
Anyone who has opted to form their own opinions and maintain the integrity of their own values will find this a very satisfying read.

Invisible Man / 0-679-73276-4

Ellison's master work is breathtaking, indescribable, and completely unique. This long and careful allegory of the young black man making his way through the white world is filled with passages so crammed with myth and meaning that the closest comparison I can make is to Rushdie's carefully disjointed Satanic Verses.

Simple incidents, such as Mr. Norton's introduction to Jim Trueblood are complex and fascinating. Trueblood has accidentally (or so he claims, - can we believe his impossible dream?) impregnated his own daughter, and now his daughter and wife are both pregnant at once. The lurid incident has resulted in Trueblood becoming a cause celebre for the white community - they hang on the lurid details, lap up the story again and again with prurient interest, and hold him up as justification for the doctrine of black inferiority.

Yet Mr. Norton's reaction to all this is a sort of disbelieving panic. He begs Trueblood to know why he is celebrated for this terrible thing, when others would be shunned. He takes great pity on the man, giving him monetary compensation for the horrible 'ordeal' he has been through. But something does not sit right, and Mr. Norton's interest seems very personal. He has mentioned that he had a daughter, and that something terrible had occurred to her. And we know that child molestation is not confined to the poor. Is it possible that...? And is Ellison suggesting that what a rich white man may hide, a poor black man cannot? Can we consider that what a rich white woman may chose to overlook, a poor black woman may not (as she has less money and social standing to 'lose' over the scandal)? Dare we wonder that a rich white girl can be sent away for private 'school' to bear a child in secret or get an abortion, when a poor black girl has only the option to shoulder on through the pregnancy?

It is the power of Invisible Man that these, and many other questions, are never answered - indeed, they are never even explicitly raised. But the nuanced narrative nudges them into our minds and, once there, we cannot let go of them.

This novel seems to be just one big blurb that is trying to be expressed by as many words as possible. Things that could be summed up in a few words can take pages and pages to dictate. This makes the presentation awfully muddy and hard to follow.

At one point he's boxing , part of an explosion at a paint factory, has a lobotomy performed on himself, and so on and so forth to more ridiculous events that build on one another. This book just lacked any flow or pace since the events became even more outrageous, jumped around from one thing to the next, then used 10 pages too many to describe each event.

These flaws prevented me from realizing the themes the author was trying to cultivate. It seems that he wanted to make a book that encapsulated every walk of African-American life during this time period: college educated, field workers, those still under control of slavery, those under command of the whites, those in unions, those who work, those in Harlem, those in cities, those who are homeless, those who are crazy, those in organizations, those in the South. No wonder such a mountainous project did not come out coherently; the scope of it was too large to dictate successfully.

Dave Foster Wallace urged writers to eschew irony. I feel the same way, and the reason is that for irony to have its effects the society at large must have a solid moral center of good permeating though it, like it did even after the first world war, although that center was by then seriously deteriorating. Then, when one reads a book like this, one clearly understands and is not afraid to feel the irony of this book; its amoral characters, and its nihilistic portrait.

By 2008, that center is nowhere to be found, and hence readers look for something else in any book; sympathize with the characters, to get something warm and true in the positive sense from the experience, to "enjoy" books, rather than learning a dry lesson (the spare prose helps) in the negative.

These are atrocious characters. All of them, even Cohn to whom the center of good gravitates simply because he is an old world degenerate rather than a new world one. You don't go around beating people up.

I don't know how clear I was in expressing my thoughts, but I feel that irony in writing has outlived its usefulness.

This is an old classic. The re-read was worth it. I noted interesting parallels with the author's (Hemingway's) real life. The descriptions of the fishing expedition in the Pyrenees was particularly good. It's still a worthwhile read, but that is the definition of a classic.

A timeless classic -- that still moves me, even now - years after my first reading!

I'm 47 years old, have read thousands of books, and until this week had never read Hemingway. It was only finding myself out of town without a book that I snatched up my high school son's edition of The Sun Also Rises.

This is a very well written, relatively short novel which takes about five hours to finish at a leisurely pace. I must say, that for the first 50 pages or so, I was not impressed. Not a whole lot going on and what was happening didn't exactly get the heart racing. As the characters in the book relocated from Paris to Pamplona, however, I started to become engrossed in the story. I found myself reading later into the night, not feeling sleepy at all and not wanted to leave the story.

The novel follows a group of American and British expatriates in the interwar years (1920s) as they loll around and party their way through France and into Spain for the Festival of San Fermin in Pamplona. The characters are predominantly alcohol soaked wastrels whose life consists of drinking, eating, drinking, passing out, drinking, going to bull fights, drinking, eating, passing out, drinking and doing a little fishing on the side.

It is a tribute to the beautiful, highly descriptive writing of Hemingway that such a backdrop can be crafted into an entertaining read, but I must say he pulls it off. This novel has certainly motivated me to read more Hemingway.

I had mixed feelings about this one. It starts off a little choppy and the characters are hard to differentiate at first. Worse, most of the people in this book aren't all that likeable - they bicker continually and are often cruel to each other and everyone else they encounter (and some of them definitely express some anti-Semitic or racist sentiments.) With all that being said, though, the story and characters eventually come into focus, and I thought it turned into a fairly convincing account of disconnection, evasion, longing, disillusionment, and emotional pain. There's also a certain atmosphere that develops as the characters move through Spain drinking and fishing and sleeping with each other and fighting with each other and going to the bullfights. All of it began to feel very real to me, and I did start to feel sympathy for certain characters. Somehow the last line of the book hit me pretty hard and dramatically improved the way I felt about the entire story. I didn't like this one nearly as much as Old Man and the Sea, but the feel of the book still lingers with me.

What makes this a very great book is that nihilism is portrayed in all its depth and horror but one is not invited by the book to enter into the nihlism, quite the contrary. The nihilism is made so ugly that nihilism becomes repellant. Picasso sometimes claimed to be sur-realist as Picasso claimed that what his paintings portrayed was realer than real. Picasso also claimed that what was painted couldn't be a representation but nevertheless had to have things in the world as a basis. This is another aspect of Picasso's sur-realism. Art then has to be out of this world but also of the world. 'Blood Meridian' is sur-real in this sense. The prose is by far the best prose McCarthy has written. 'Blood Meridian' is one of the best books of the last half century and the very peak of McCarthy's writing. I think 'Blood Meridian' basically is McCarthy's writing career.

This is the fictionalized account of the Glanton Gang, a rag-tag band of men who roamed the American west around 1850. Originally hired by Mexican towns to hunt down a group of Apaches that had been terrorizing the citizens, the gang eventually roams the countryside with an insatiable bloodlust, violently murdering and scalping everyone they encounter.

There are no "good guys" in Blood Meridian, and if there is one inarguable theme to take away from a book that is both deep and cryptic, it is that neither the image of the cowboy hero battling the blood-thirsty Indians as portrayed in John Wayne movies, nor the revisionist history of the noble savage falling victim to the westward expansion of America is accurate. The picture that McCarthy paints is a west full of savage brutality, where nobody is innocent. It is an apocalypse of violence, surreal and unsettling. In no place and no character do we find sanctuary from the depravity. McCarthy spares no one: women, children, puppies and priests are slaughtered without prejudice. It is a tale with much posturing and philosophizing but no apparent morality, where destruction is as natural as the sky or the mountains.

McCarthy's writing is bombastic and beautiful, juxtaposing imagery one might expect more in Dante's INFERNO with poetic descriptions of the open land. The characters read like a perverse version of Chaucer, many of them with titles rather than names: The Kid and the ex-priest. The judge, Holden, based on a real-life man, is the second in command. He is an enormous, pale white apparition, a hairless monstrosity with the gravity of a Colonel Kurtz. He is a poet, a preacher, a philosopher, knowledgeable in natural sciences, history, and the arts. He is the spiritual leader of the gang, and the moral nadir of humanity, the most brutal and memorable character of the book.

BLOOD MERIDIAN is not for the faint of heart. It's unflinching in its personification of evil and depiction of the brutality of which men are capable. It has been criticized by some for its over-the-top language, and though it's not as sparse as THE ROAD or NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN, the imagery is just as powerful. In fact, some of the apocalyptic imagery is repeated, perhaps more suitably, in THE ROAD. But THE ROAD is about an apocalypse yet to come. BLOOD MERIDIAN is about an apocalypse that occurred 150 years ago.

"Blood Meridian" is one of the few books that has stuck with me for years. Due to the graphic violence, I don't recommend it to a lot of people, and I must admit that it put me off for quite a while at the beginning. That said, it has passed the test of time with me. It is one of VERY few books that I have re-read. When I finished this book, I just had to take a deep breath. I'm not some literature major, or someone who wants to analyze all the symbolism that is obviously present here, but I still found this to be accessible and powerful. The language is magnificent, and the entire book has a "gut level" feel that, while taking a long time to cultivate, is truly unique. I've read all of McCarthy's novels and this is by far my favorite. If you really liked "No Country For Old Men" (a glorified screenplay, in my opinion) and/or "The Road", this book may NOT be for you. If you liked the Border Trilogy, particularly "The Crossing", then buy this and read it immediately. You might also like "Paradise" by Toni Morrison.

Going into Blood Meridian, Cormac McCarthy's 1985 novel, I was well aware of its notorious reputation for extreme violent content; having, in recent months, already experienced the sometimes disturbing imagery of the stark modern western No Country For Old Men (2005), the post-apocalyptic The Road (2006), and the gritty "Border Trilogy" (1992's All The Pretty Horses, 1994's The Crossing, and 1998's Cities Of The Plain), I thought I could just prepare myself for anything.

The bulk of the story is set along the Texas-Mexico border circa 1850, and it concerns a teenage runaway from Tennessee -- known simply as "the kid" -- who takes up with a company of scalp-collectors led by Captain John Joel Glanton and the mysterious, hulking albino Judge Holden. This rather thin and meandering plot almost gets lost in thick tangles of relentlessly and almost oppressively ugly description -- I often found myself re-reading passages multiple times just to figure out what had just happened or who was saying what (as McCarthy tends not to set off his usually spare dialogue with quotation marks). Plus, there are no particularly sympathetic characters for us to root for throughout: Though we see the majority of the action through the kid's eyes, he is basically a cipher; and while the judge is probably the most interesting and fully developed character here, he only becomes more frightening and repulsive as more aspects of his personality are revealed.

On the surface, this would be merely a depressing symphony of bloodletting, brain matter, bones, bodily wastes, nudity, corpses, filth, scalpings and other mutilations, and (so help me) cruelty to animals. But there seems to be more going on here that makes this strangely compelling... For one thing, especially in the later chapters, every single time I felt myself growing numb to the violence and ugliness, and I thought McCarthy had gone as far as he could possibly go, something else even more brutal and gruesome would always come along to shock and shake me. Plus, as unbearable as that could've been, I think it helps that McCarthy's idiosyncratic prose style is so matter-of-fact and yet so poetic throughout, his narrative seems devoid of moral judgment and emotional excess -- it simply paints pictures in your head for you to interpret and feel about however you see fit.

More importantly, I don't think there would be much point in subjecting yourself to all this stuff if it weren't meant to open your eyes to some often-ignored historical events (specifically in America's westward expansion); and indeed, I wonder if McCarthy had just grown disenchanted with the romance and mythology of the western genre, and thus decided to strip them away and say, "Folks, this is how it really was in that time and place, and it wasn't pretty." And furthermore, I wonder if McCarthy was trying to provoke people with this material -- deliberately pushing the envelope with it just to pose the question, "What's more obscene, my graphic language or the fact that stuff like this actually happened in history?"

Bottom line: Though widely acknowledged as a modern classic, this is not the first Cormac McCarthy novel I would recommend to anybody. But if you have already read at least one other of his books and are familiar with his unique style -- as well as his unflinching depictions of dark subject matter -- I think you might find Blood Meridian a wrenching but rewarding piece of work.

It seems that most of the negative reviews this book receives are holding it to the standards of commercial fiction. This is not commercial fiction, it is not supposed to be a Clint Eastwood western, and it certainly isn't meant for those who ignore the beauty of McCarthy's writing because they think this simile is too vague or that word too archaic.
This is a difficult book - it is difficult to read, to digest, to fathom, and even to stomach at parts. It is literature. You aren't always supposed to be able to "connect" with or relate to characters. A book doesn't always need a fast-moving plot. This book, rather, is a collage of scenes which, in relation to each other, form a cohesive whole.
Except for "No Country for Old Men," McCarthy's books are more character- and concept-driven than plot-driven.
McCarthy is an absolute master storyteller, narrator, and stylist. It's understandable that some like his more sparse work of recent years. His literary genius is evident in these works as well. But it is incorrect to mistake his more "baroque" works (like this and "Suttree," which I have been slowly ingesting over the past few months) as him trying to find his style. And long, obscure vocabulary doesn't automatically mean that the writer is pretensious. If you don't like the style, that's your business, but just because you don't like it doesn't make it inferior.
"Blood Meridian" is certainly not for everyone. It is horrifying at times. My first time reading through it, I stopped 100 pages into it because of the violence. It took me a month to give it another try. I wouldn't recommend it to many people I know personally. But as a work of art it is brilliant. The prose is poetic, the themes are timeless, the characters (particularly the Judge) are immortal. It isn't my favorite McCarthy book but it's more amazing as a book than his other novels.

This book is a non-stop thriller. If you like action that never stops this is a book for you. The Outsiders has alot of turns and twists and it keeps you guesing about what it going to happen next. The ending of thid bok was kick in the face if you know what I mean, You don't expect alot of things to happen but yet they do. So if you like this kind of action then you should either buy,rent,or even if you can find it watch the movie.

The Outsiders is a classic tale of the struggles between two gangs in Oklahoma. The gang known as the "Greasers" are characterized by their long, silky, and greasy hair. This group is the lower class, but yet much smarter than the upper class. The upper class gang is the "Socs" or Socials. This story shows the life and tensions between these two gangs. After Johnny, a member of the Greasers kills a member of the Socs even greater tensions rise. This leads Johnny and Ponyboy, whom the story revolves around, to hide out and try to stay away from the police. While in hiding something tragic happens to Johnny, leaving an unthinkable fate. As the gangs are furious with the losses, they declare a rumble. After this rumble, a miraculous thing occurs in the story. Something that is so thrilling you will have to read it to find out!
I really enjoyed this book, although it seemed to be almost an exact replica of West Side Story. That factor in a way took the fun out of reading parts of it, as you could almost guess what was going to happen next. Though for readers not familiar with West Side Story, this book is a fantastic tale of love, hate, and tension. Though I felt it was repetitive, it was very compelling and kept you turning the pages. It also left you wanting more at the end, though the ending was purely fabulous. I recommend this book to young adults and teens who enjoy enticing stories and stories with many genres. This book is a good purchase, and you will not be disappointed!

For me, this is one of those books that you can read over and over and over, and even though you know the ending, you still can't put it down and you wish that maybe this time, there'll be a different ending.

I won't bother writing a detailed review about this book because I'd probably go on and on about it. I read it in my early teen years, and though it was never really relevant to my life (the setting, for one, is completely different from what I'm used to, and I was always somewhere in the middle of high school cliques - not on the outside, but not on the inside, either), but even then, I couldn't help but care deeply for each of the greasers. Ponyboy and his friends & family were flawed, but still likable, and they made me want the best for each of them.

Highly recommended. I can't say that enough.

Author S.E. Hinton writes with a keen sense of teenage fears, emotions, and alienation from the world of adults. The story concerns the divide between the richer Socs and the lower-income Greasers in Tulsa, Oklahoma. The main character is Ponyboy Curtis, an orphan who is likeable, tough, fearful, and into his Greaser gang. Ponyboy and his peers must deal with a confusing mix of school, friends, the socs, the law, and problems at home. Ponyboy gets jumped by a group of Socs (increasing his coolness), and later finds himself mixed in when his friend Johnny kills a Soc in a confrontation. The two flee, but more trouble follows. This story has nearly all the elements; teenage alienation, machismo, broken homes, alcohol, violence and tragedy.

A couple friends and I read this book in 7th grade in the 1970's, and despite our stable, gang-free existence, we identified strongly with Ponyboy and his Greasers. Readers today may develop a similiar identification, although the story seems a bit tame by today's gang realities of drug dealing and violence.

S E Hinton wrote this 128 pages book when she was 17. I thought she would have written something interesting or truthful of the life of teens in the US. How wrong it turned out to be! There is no plot, no interesting thing happening, just meaningless street fights and crazy violence. And throughout book, it shows how badly the writer is equipped with writing skills, if any skills at all. It told so many things which are unbelievable and unreal. How often do you see two skinny teenage girls, when one 6.2 foot bad boy offered them Coke, one of the girls would throw the Coke on the bully's face in return for his hospitality? Probably the this poor writer did and resulted in her forever brain damage which resulted in this crazy improbable tale. The main character's first name is Ponyboy and his brother Sodapop. I don't think there are many people in this world can find more stupid names. The names also made the whole crazy story unbelievable. What a waste of time in writing this thing called novel! An insult to anyone with any degree of intelligence. Strongly advise anyone not to waste his or her time and money.

A beautiful book about Sammy and Joe, two cousins who end up writing and drawing comic books together, the Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay is a staggering tale of dedication, commitment, human frailty, perseverance, loyalty, and the many faces of the most powerful of all super powers, love. it shows the power of the love and appreciation of art, the power of family, the power of ethnicity, and the power of dreams. There is a riff early in Kavalier and Clay in which Sammy throws out ideas for heroes that is a hilarious send-up of super powers. Chabon knows that Sammy knows from the beginning that he has the power of his dreams, the power of his loyalty, and ultimately the power of love that will carry him through adversity to find happiness. Joe on the other hand must face the unimaginably grim reality of leaving everyone he loves behind to face the Nazi horrors. There is never a mystery about what Joe's loved ones face, and we feel along with him the guilt of his finding new people to love in the America of the mid-20th Century, a place of amazing opportunity and amazing charlatans. Chabon destroys the idea of nostalgia by exposing some societal norms that border on the Nazism that the characters set out to fight, each in his own way. The book is set in a particular time and Chabon does not glamorize that time, just portrays it honestly.

Normally I view the Pulitzer Prize as an enormous badge of mediocrity. Look how many books chosen for it have fallen from fashion, never to darken the door of literature beyond their meager days in the sun. Yet with Kavalier and Clay the pretentious puffer fish of the Pulitzer Prize committee plucked a plum. This novel will stand because of Chabon's marvelous wordcraft, and the most super of all powers.

I like the writing in this book. I like the characters in it. It took me to a different time and place. The characters are rich and complex. I cannot, however, recommend this book. It has many sub-stories within its main storyline. Many of them are never resolved. They just fade away. The book zig-zags all of the place. I finished four-fifths of the book and gave up. I got tired of twists and turns that ended nowhere.

Kavalier and Clay are Jewish cousins, Clay (morphed from Klayman) a short New Yorker crippled by polio, Kavalier a tall brooding escapee from Europe just before Hitler locked the gates and opened the extermination lines. The day after Kavalier's surprising arrival in New York, after his amazing escape from Europe via Japan and San Francisco, Sam and Joe launch the multi-million dollar earning Escapist comic book line in a combination of daring, talent, and brinksmanship bluffing.

The rest of the book is the story of how they survive success and conquer failure. The book reads quickly, with only an uncomfortable homosexuality subplot to ruin the enjoyment of the interaction between the cousins and the bubbling potboiling excitement of the early days of comic books in the 1930 and 1940s.

I listened to the abridged version of this, which made me miss some of the exposition that Chabon loves to engage in. Kavalier and Clay's lives and the juxtaposition of New York as a city in those lives was very well done. NYC was almost like a third main character. Chabon also did a good job of describing the golem and other Jewish traditions without bogging down the story. Towards the end, a melancholy that stuck with me after the book ended set in. Kavalier and Clay live on, but their lives have gone from marvelous to ordinary.

I'd been looking forward to reading this book for a while. It was both critically and popularly acclaimed - a literary novel involving the creators of comic books during WWII. I thought it sounded promising, but in the end it was a bit of a disappointment (at least for me). On the plus side, the characters were well drawn and likeable, the atmosphere and setting came to life when not overdone, and the beginning and end of the book were very good. The main problem for me was that it was just too long in the middle without giving me anything that really grabbed me or compelled me to keep reading. I've enjoyed quite a few books that were longer than this one, but here I didn't think there was enough driving the narrative forward - too often it felt like one thing happening, and then something else, and then something else. A lot of the individual plot incidents were interesting and inventive, and some of them did finally wrap up into something worthwhile, but it took too long and a lot of it seemed like it could have been cut. There were also far too many sentences that contained far too many commas and extraneous clauses for my tastes. Ultimately I don't regret reading it, but I wouldn't necessarily recommend it either.