I guess that included making me depressed for a week after finishing The Road.

It included making me depressed for a week after reading a lot of his books.

Do I need to use spoiler tags if I mention a certain part of the book?

>!I absolutely adored the part where they find the underground bunker and get to just enjoy life for a bit. The food and amenities were all very basic and nothing really unusual happens but there is a strange intensity to their time spent there. The ability to take something fairly mundane and surround it with events that make it stand out as borderline-miraculous is really something special. !<

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>!If I were ever in a post-apocalyptic scenario akin to the one described in The Road I could die happily after finding and spending some time in my version of 'the bunker'.!<

well he managed that

Reading Blood Meridian for the first time right now. My first McCarthy novel. Just wow. He more than accompanied his goal.

He really describes the making of food and the assembling and disassembling of things into the religious ritual for their survival. Reread it and notice how many times “he knelt” is used in those passages. An astonishing book a masterpiece really. Other dystopian fiction seems silly in comparison

“Whatever exists, he said. Whatever in creation exists without my knowledge exists without my consent.
He looked about at the dark forest in which they were bivouacked. He nodded toward the specimens he'd collected. These anonymous creatures, he said, may seem little or nothing in the world. Yet the smallest crumb can devour us. Any smallest thing beneath yon rock out of men's knowing. Only nature can enslave man and only when the existence of each last entity is routed out and made to stand naked before him will he be properly suzerain of the earth.”
― Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian, or the Evening Redness in the West

I would not call The Road dystopian. Maybe an apocalypse book.

Yeah it's definitely a "sad future" lol, but nothing about it is a failed utopia

I am currently only two chapters in and finding Blood Meridian to be brutal so far and I can only imagine it to get worse as I progress through.

I've only read No Country For Old Men and The Road, the latter absolutely breaking me and making me cry (as a 41 year old man I say that not to brag like it the book had some profound impact on me, as a dad it crushed me). The only book to ever do so to me as far as I can recall, especially so as an adult.

His writing style is very basic, to the point (meaning there isn't any unnecessary fluff, not that it lacks ability or skill). The absence of punctuation when it comes to direct speech is often confusing. Despite this I have loved both books I have read by him.

What other books of his would you recommend?

“Child of God”. Lester Ballard is a depraved sicko.

I've just ordered it, along with The Border Trilogy, thank you.

Blood Meridian is the farthest thing from basic writing and storytelling.

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You either missed what I put int he parenthesis or chose to ignore it.

In fact take out the phrase about it being basic and just read the bit about his writing being blunt and to the point. You can see how that information in the sentence contextualises my statement and adds extra depth to the point I was making.

But hey, this is the internet and by all means jump on the smallest detail and scrutinise it rather than looking at the wider point being made.

I saw you mentioned ordering the Border trilogy in another comment, but The Crossing (book 2) is genuinely some of the most stunning writing ever put to paper. The middle 100 pages or so especially has a beautiful dreamlike quality to it, almost like a collection of parables being passed down through generations, more like a spoken word mythos than literature. Can't recommend it enough!

The section with the priest and the heretic is some of the most engrossing and beautiful prose I've read. I always revisit that chapter