Blood Meridian , or The evening Redness in The West by Cormac McCarthy

So back when No Country For Old Men was all the rage a lot of talk was going around about Cormac McCarthy's other books . I picked up Blood Meridian .


I thought his style of writing took a little getting used to . He does not use quotations in conversations & will have entire conversations in spanish & while describing every plant & cloud & smell & breeze can sometimes forget important things resulting in other pages & scenes being vague or even confusing .


The good part is that he makes a western that is nothing like the traditional cowboy movies & is a brutal tale of survival in the 1850's along the mexican border about a boy who joins up with a band of scalp hunters with some very odd & well fleshed out characters . It was very violent but it all went along with the craziness of the time . Honestly I don't think there was one person in this book you call a good guy .

There are some scenes that are so intensly violent & depraved that you feel a little dirty & shaken after reading them . This was a turbulant time , you had the Civil War - (Yay North!) the Gold Rush the USA / mexican War , Indian War, among other things going on all at once in a lawless unforgiving frontier . The Dahmer Party have nothing on what goes on in this book .

I still have mixed feelings on this book but Cormac managed to ingrain images in my mind that effected me on a level books rarely do , so that is something in itself .



DEATH RACE

Checked out the updated version of Death Race 200 from the 70's today . Yes it was over the top & cheesy but my god this movie kicked ass ! This could have easily been so bad & a junker of a movie but they pumped out an action packed violent hardcore piece of work that drew us in with the first scene (with David Caradine voicing Frankenstien 1) & just didn't let up after . Gore - laughs - action - it was nuts ! Gets 5 out of 5 screaming skulls on my list .