Tournament of Books discussion

Location to discuss Tournament of Rooster Winners book: The Road by Cormac McCarthy

Oh, no, am I finally going to have to break down and read this?!

Drew wrote: "Oh, no, am I finally going to have to break down and read this?!"

Me too. I kind of dread it.

It’s a fast read... I think I read it in one sitting. Slim, fast moving and gripping - but I don’t think I want to go through that again!

Read it on a sunny day all in one sitting. And then go out and do something fun and happy.

Amy wrote: "It’s a fast read... I think I read it in one sitting. Slim, fast moving and gripping - but I don’t think I want to go through that again!"

This. Exactly this. It is a must-read, and then a must-never-read-again because it is absolutely, brutally devastating. Like Amy, I read it in one sitting; bawled my eyes out; and said, "NEVER. AGAIN."

It did nothing for me. I've read a lot of post-apocalyptic books and this one just seemed ponderous and affected to me, too in love with its own sense of grandeur. All that "The Boy" and "The Man" stuff. Nah, not for me.

Grim as fug. Fine, fine work, but not something I care to revisit. I read McCarthy's Border Trilogy long before I gt to this and I often go back and revisit passages from those amazing books. I haven't dared crack my copy of The Road since I filed it on my shelves.

this won? really? hmm.

i wonder how cormac mccarthy feels about this being his most successful book ever.

This book really sits on you--like a physical weight. Some of his other books do this too, namely Child of God and Outer Dark.

Ellen wrote: "It did nothing for me. I've read a lot of post-apocalyptic books and this one just seemed ponderous and affected to me, too in love with its own sense of grandeur. All that "The Boy" and "The Man" ..."

I'm starting to think you may be my reading soulmate, Ellen, because I tried this one and DNF it, for the very reason you described...

Bob wrote: "This book really sits on you--like a physical weight. Some of his other books do this too, namely Child of God and Outer Dark."

YES. The craft is enormously impressive, and the emotional impact considerable. But, seriously: Never. Again. Not even for the ToB Rooster of Roosters!

Daniel wrote: "Grim as fug. Fine, fine work, but not something I care to revisit. I read McCarthy's Border Trilogy long before I gt to this and I often go back and revisit passages from those amazing books. I hav..."

Exactly this. (About The Road, I mean. I've not read the Border Trilogy.)

I read this in a long weekend as a student teacher for 11th grade English. The mentor teacher asked me to read it and see if it was appropriate for teenagers. It was gripping and I read it all at once, was insanely depressed for a couple days and just couldn't inflict that on those happy 16 year olds. We read The Things They Carried instead. I guess that wasn't too happy either

I was dreading this, since a pandemic is not an ideal time to be reading post-apocalyptic stories, but it actually worked for me. Maybe because our current situation isn't quite to this level? I appreciated the bare-bones way of getting at big themes like parent-child connection, humanity and what we do in times of crisis, and a little slice of hope when you're wading through the darkest depths. I see that the 14 people I'm connected with on Goodreads have a wide range of ratings for this, from 1 star hated-its to 5 star loved-its. I can see both sides of this and ended up giving it 4 stars.