The Friday 56 and Book Beginnings #3

The Friday 56 is a weekly meme hosted by Freda's Voice where every Friday you pick a book and turn to page 56 or 56%, and select a sentence or a few, as long as it's not a spoiler. For the full rules, visit the the page HERE

Book Beginnings is a weekly meme hosted by Rose City Reader that asks you to share the first sentence (or so) of the book you're reading.

In his blistering new novel, Cormac McCarthy returns to the Texas-Mexico border, setting of his famed Border Trilogy. The time is our own, when rustlers have given way to drug-runners and small towns have become free-fire zones. 

One day, Llewellyn Moss finds a pickup truck surrounded by a bodyguard of dead men. A load of heroin and two million dollars in cash are still in the back. When Moss takes the money, he sets off a chain reaction of catastrophic violence that not even the law–in the person of aging, disillusioned Sheriff Bell–can contain.

As Moss tries to evade his pursuers–in particular a mysterious mastermind who flips coins for human lives–McCarthy simultaneously strips down the American crime novel and broadens its concerns to encompass themes as ancient as the Bible and as bloodily contemporary as this morning’s headlines. 
No Country for Old Men is a triumph.


Book Beginnings: I sent one boy to the gaschamber at Huntsville. One and only one. My arrest and my testimony. I went up there and visited with him two or three times. Three times. The last time
was the day of his execution.

The Friday 56: I need another room.

You want to change rooms or you want another one besides the one you've got?

I want to keep the one I got and get another one.

All right.



What are you reading this week? Have you read anything by Cormac McCarthy? What are the most ridiculous quotes you've seen from these memes so far this week?

On lonely books

It's simply beautiful how each book can invoke different emotions within readers. One that I feel is more difficult to capture (and pass on to readers) is loneliness - it's a complicated emotions and everyone experiences is slightly differently. However, here are some books that capture it really well.

• The Gunslinger by Stephen King - This book is full of Roland's first adventures and his solo journey towards the Dark Tower. He meets few people and these interactions never go well for him. It's a sad and long (and lonely) journey.

• The Road by Cormac McCarthy - Two people traveling down the road - that's basically the plot of this book. It's slow, it's sad, and it's a very quiet and lonely story.

• Persuasion by Jane Austen - So much of Anne Elliott's life is being pushed into the background and forgotten about. This book follows a very lonely and sad protagonist who finds happiness - it's the perfect book for a sad beginning and a satisfying happy ending.

• My Side of the Mountain by Jean Craighead George - An old children's classic, this book follows a boy who runs away to the wilderness and the adventures he has living on his own.

What other books capture loneliness well? Have you read and enjoyed anything from this list?