The Road is my favorite fathering book ever. I have recommended it to all my dad friends. Audiobook is excellent too.

I gifted it to a couple of new Dad friends. They never did get back to me about it. Fair.

I can see why, but as a new father the last thing I want my fatherhood associated with is that horrible horrible story.

I read The Road long before I became a father and part of me is, I guess, afraid to read it again now that I have two kids—perhaps because I remember how devastating it was then and suspecting it would be 100x that now. But I do intend to reread it sooner or later.

I've read it twice. Once as a naive 16-year-old. Once, as a young father. Profoundly upsetting the second time.

I'd also suggest Siddhartha for this. Having read it at different points of my life makes it uniquely special.

The only book I've ever read in a single sitting.

After reading the Road, I started on Blood Meridian and could not continue, swearing never to read McCarthy again. The man's soul was just too dark.

If you think "Blood Meridian" is dark, try "Child of God." I'm a huge McCarthy fan, but "Blood Meridian" is tough to appreciate. "The Road," "No Country for Old Men," and "All the Pretty Horses" are his most readable works; try them, then decide how much farther you want to go.

I think Blood Meridian is his best book by far. The first time I read it, when I got to the end, I didn't even get up from my chair, just went right back to the beginning and started reading it again.

I also like the border trilogy: All the Pretty Horses, The Crossing, and Cities of the Plain. Sort of surprisingly, never actually read No Country for Old Men although I've seen the movie three or four times.

I think The Road is overrated.

Child of God and The Crossing are two of my favourites by him.

Yes. There’s something cruel there, or perhaps simply resigned, to reflecting the most brutal aspects of humanity in their most casual, logical, and inherent expression ([0] spoiler).

You certainly never shake the feeling that something terrible is going to happen at any moment.

I have read The Road and All the Pretty Horses. I won’t read any of the others. AtPH has less horror than The Road, for what it’s worth. It’s very much a bildungsroman.

If you enjoyed the road and want more like that, but without the horror; I’d say try our Steinbeck if you haven’t. He’s a greater writer, and less cruel.

[0] AtPH spoiler: For example mangling that boy’s feet. It’s not arbitrary, not entirely necessary, but it had a logic to it; and is exactly the type of thing people do to each other.

The Road was the first of his books I read. I read his last two books The Passenger and Stella Maris shortly after he passed. Both contained interesting thoughts on philosophy, science, mathematics. Of the two, I think Stella Maris was better - it's kind of a deep dive into genius and the madness that often accompanies it.

Agree on Steinbeck. Less cruel and more hopeful. My favorite American author. It would have been very interesting to be a fly on the wall in a discussion between an aged Steinbeck and a young McCarthy - one of those questions where if you could have two authors talk to each other over a beer and sit in on the conversation.

It’s the only book I’ve read where I came upon a passage that literally caused my jaw to drop.

Do you remember which one?

It is most certainly the feed-people in the basement scene. I felt dizzy after reading that.

Babies in the tree?

That's Blood Meridian

Yes.

Which passage was it?

>hated how it made me feel

I sometimes don't like feeling either.