Every choice has a consequence, and sometimes those consequences end up being a larger than live villain named Anton Chigur chasing after you. Made into an Oscar winning movie in 2007, the Coen Brothers made every detail in this story come alive. ( )

Me ha gustado, pero menos que Blood Meridian o The Road.Crítica completa, en catalán, en http://www.xelu.net/html/llibres/llib... ( )

First of McCarthy's books I have ever read and blown away. The character Chigurh has to be one of the meanest baddies ever. Now to read more of Cormac's books and possibly get the movie on hire. ( )

What I liked:
- McCarthy paints a picture of the country and the characters; the chapters early in the book are particularly good.

- The "voice" of the characters, both endearing and real.

- Musings on whether violence in man is "new", and other thoughs from the Sheriff directly in the chapters written from his perspective that are interspersed throught the book. He is far from incompetent, but is simplly overwhelemd and outmatched. His conversations with his old uncle at the end is great.

- Stark and direct. McCarthy does not waste a single word and "brings it", but despite that is still able to develop interesting characters and philosophize.

What I disliked:
- It's certainly not a book for anyone who dislikes violence (or lack of punctuation :-)), the bodies quickly pile up as the story goes on.

- Inexplicable behavior; the first of which is admitted as idiotic by the character ("I'm fixin to go do somethin dumbern hell but I'm goin anyways" ... also "There is no description of a fool, he said, that you fail to satisfy"), but the second of which is just baffling.

Favorite quotes:
"I thought I'd never seen a person like that and it got me to wonderin if maybe he was some new kind."

"I dont even want to know. I dont even want to know what all you been up to.
He sipped the beer and nodded. That'll work, he said.
I think it's better just to not even know even.
You keep runnin that mouth and I'm going to take you back there and screw you.
Big talk.
Just keep it up.
That's what she said.
Just let me finish this beer. We'll see what she said and what she didnt say."

"Where's your truck at?
Gone the way of all flesh. Nothin's forever."

"You think about a job where you have pretty much the same authority as God and there is no requirements put upon you and you are charged with preservin nonexistent laws and you tell me if that's peculiar or not. Because I say that is. Does it work? Yes. Ninety percent of the time. It takes very little to govern good people. Very little. And bad people cant be governed at all. Or if they could I never heard of it."

"People complain about the bad things that happen to em that they dont deserve but they seldom mention the good. About what they done to deserve them things. I dont recall that I ever give the good Lord that much cause to smile on me. But he did."

"Nineteen is old enough to know that if you have got somethin that means the world to you it's all that more likely it'll get took away. Sixteen was, for that matter. I think about that.
Bell nodded. I aint a stranger to them thoughts, Carla Jean. Them thoughts is very familiar to me."

"The people I know are mostly just common people. Common as dirt, as the sayin goes. I told her that and she looked at me funny. She thought I was sayin somethin bad about em, but of course that's a high compliment in my part of the world."

"I think if you were Satan and you were settin around tryin to think up somethin that would ust bring the human race to its knees what you would probably come up with is narcotics."

"You think when you wake up in the mornin yesterday dont count. But yesterday is all that does count. What else is there? Your life is made out of the days it's made out of. Nothin else."

"I think by the time you've grown you're as happy as you're goin to be. You'll have good times and bad times, but in the end you'll be about as happy as you was before. Or as unhappy. I've knowed people that just never did get the hang of it."

"You can be patriotic and still believe that some things cost more than they're worth. Ask them Gold Star mothers what they paid and what they got for it. You always pay too much. Particularly for promises."

"You know that Gospel song? We'll understand it all by and by? That takes a lot of faith. You think about him goin over there and dyin in a ditch somewheres. Seventeen year old. You tell me. Because I damn sure dont know."

"This country will kill you in a heartbeat and still people love it." ( )

might be giving Cormac a little too much credit here, as there's this explicit theme of "waaa things are changing waaa I'm old and I wish things wouldn't change" that is pretty ridiculous. Bemoans the death of God. But the detailed descriptions of bodily movements, emphasizing their inaccessible mental state, is brilliant in this book. Cormac's dialogue is also pretty good and feels very realistic, even formally so with his lack of quotation marks. ( )