One Book a Month

"It’s true that adventures are good for people even when they are very young. Adventures can get in a person’s blood even if he doesn’t remember having them."

Mapping the Literary Landscape of the South: An interview with Jeff Jackson ↘

No Country for Old Men - The First 100 Pages

Let me begin by assuring you that I have not seen the recent movie adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s No Country for Old Men. And now, after reading the first 100 pages, I have my reservations about watching it at all.

This is not to say that I dislike the book - I like it immensely, in fact. It reminds me of a cross between Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury and Capote’s In Cold Blood. Like Faulkner, McCarthy is sparing in punctuation - particularly quotation marks. This can make his dialogue difficult to follow, and takes some time to get used too. However he does not have Faulkner’s infamous rambling sentences. McCarthy keeps his narrative to short, clipped sentences full of precise description. Where some authors may glide over the names of plants or the state of a bullet wound, McCarthy delves into an exact, detached, almost methodical description.

While No Country for Old Men may resemble The Sound and the Fury in syntax, it is more akin to In Cold Blood in its story. The reader is introduced to the novel with a gruesome scene of bodies massacred on the Texas-Mexico border, and thus begins the wild chase of Llewellyn Moss by Chigurh, with a team of law enforcement led by the Sheriff Bell scrambling behind.

To read about violence and to watch it occur are two very different things. McCarthy’s descriptions of carnage in No Country for Old Men are enough to make me shiver, despite the summer heat. I don’t know how I would take the senseless violence if I were to watch the movie adaptation. To see the bloated, decaying bodies of the dope runners in the desert, to watch as Chigurh disposed of the men in Llewellyn’s abandoned motel room - these are scenes I don’t know if I could stand to watch. Regardless of my squeamishness, I will wait to watch No Country for Old Men the movie, until after I have finished the book.

What are your first impressions? Feel free to submit your own review through the Submit tab.

Book of the Month - May 2011

I’ve tallied up the votes from last week, and the overwhelming winner is…

No Country for Old Men by Cormac McCarthy

“In 1980 southwest Texas, Llewelyn Moss, hunting antelope near the Rio Grande, stumbles across several dead men, a bunch of heroin and $2.4 million in cash. The bulk of the novel is a gripping man-on-the-run sequence relayed in terse, masterful prose as Moss, who’s taken the money, tries to evade Wells, an ex–Special Forces agent employed by a powerful cartel, and Chigurh, an icy psychopathic murderer armed with a cattle gun and a dangerous philosophy of justice. Also concerned about Moss’s whereabouts is Sheriff Bell, an aging lawman struggling with his sense that there’s a new breed of man (embodied in Chigurh) whose destructive power he simply cannot match.” - Amazon.com

Thanks for voting!

Hey, have you guys read the Perks of Being a Wallflower? There will be a movie about it starring Logan Lerman and Emma Watson.

Submitted by Glamnotsham

I had heard about this movie, and I know the book is a wild success, especially among the Tumblr community. I myself have yet to read it, but it remains on my ever-growing list of Things I Should Read.

Is anyone else excited about the movie adaptation?

Side Read: The Hunger Games Series

I will start this post by admitting that this is probably a mistake. I read The Hunger Games right before my finals started, as a break from my tedious studying and Maugham’s weary epic. However, finals descended upon me and I promised myself that if I just made it through, I’d reward myself with the last two books in Collins’ series. They arrived this morning - Catching Fire and Mockingjay. I devoured both today, with a few good hours in between for errands and food and socialization with the world. In total, I would estimate the entire series took me roughly 12 hours to read.

And that is why this post is a mistake. I have just finished the final lines of Mockingjay’s epilogue, and I am experiencing a combination of emotions that many avid readers are familiar with. First, and foremost, I feel cheated. This is not because the story ended without any catharsis. No, I always feel this way after coming to the end of a good story. Some people put down a book and smile and say, “Yes, I am fulfilled. That is enough.” The end is never enough for me. I feel abandoned - as if the friends I have made over this great journey have turned tail and left me. And I’m emotional, not in the weepy romantic sort of way, but the sense that I wax philosophical over life, and the story, and pretty much anything really. Finally, it is late, and during the early morning I always tend to say things that I believe sound very important and meaningful, but in the morning turn out to be cliched and ordinary.

First I will say that none of the books from The Hunger Games series are one of my favorites. Nor will I say they are particularly well written - they’re not horrible, but they lack an… eloquence that I sorely missed. But they have a story. The kind of story where you can’t wait to see what happens next, so you skip down a few paragraphs to get to the real meat of the plot. Then you go back and read the descriptions and dialogues you skipped - mollified that you know whats coming, and you can savor the slow crescendo to the actual event.

The characters are perfect - especially Katniss. She embodies everything a main character should be, particularly in a first-person novel. The reader has only a few degrees of separation from the character; so that they may sympathize one moment and admonish the next. She annoyed me sometimes, but never enough that I would cast her off - and there was always Peeta to balance out her sometimes savage practicality. And that is precisely why Peeta isn’t the main character - he is too perfect, he is the counter-weight to balance Katniss. The reader just removed enough (because they view him through a first-person lens) that they can enjoy Peeta without being suffocated or questioning his perfection. While it is true that in Mockingjay he is not the lovable Peeta of the first two books, in the end he still retains his greatness that makes him so attractive.

If you’ve managed to read this much, I commend you. If I saw this giant wall of text on my dashboard, I’d be likely to skim over it. If you’re like me, and have skimmed over everything else in this review, read this: The Hunger Games, despite being a young adult series, is worth your consideration. Its plot and characters carry you through any faults you may find in its writing. It is the type of story which, when you come to the conclusion, at first you will refuse to re-read because you can not bear the loss of it ending again.

Book Poll: May 2011 - Books with Movie Adaptations

Monthly Book Poll: Selection TBA Sunday May 22nd

1. Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen - “Water for Elephants is the story of Jacob’s life with this circus. Jacob, once it becomes known that he has veterinary skills, is put in charge of the “menagerie” and all its ills. [He] is the only person in the book who has a handle on a moral compass and as his reward he spends most of the novel beaten, broken, concussed, bleeding, swollen and hungover. He is the self-appointed Protector of the Downtrodden, and… he falls in love with Marlena, crazy August’s wife. Not his best idea.” Love story. Historical fiction. Rich plot.

2. Out of Africa by Isak Dinesen - “Isak Dinesen is an enlightened observer and participant as she describes the experience of British East Africa before World War II. She portrays in rich detail the vast land around her, alive with strange and wonderful human populations; the thrilling terror of a nocturnal lion hunt; a shooting accident among the Africans on her farm and its repercussions; raising and freeing an orphaned antelope fawn; getting to know the Africans and the colonial adventurers who found their way into her life.” Biography. Classic. Empowering.

3. No Country for Old Men by Cormac McCarthy - “In 1980 southwest Texas, Llewelyn Moss, hunting antelope near the Rio Grande, stumbles across several dead men, a bunch of heroin and $2.4 million in cash. The bulk of the novel is a gripping man-on-the-run sequence relayed in terse, masterful prose as Moss, who’s taken the money, tries to evade Wells, an ex–Special Forces agent employed by a powerful cartel, and Chigurh, an icy psychopathic murderer armed with a cattle gun and a dangerous philosophy of justice. Also concerned about Moss’s whereabouts is Sheriff Bell, an aging lawman struggling with his sense that there’s a new breed of man (embodied in Chigurh) whose destructive power he simply cannot match.” Western. Action. Prose.

Which novel would you like to read?