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"   Entertainment Weekly released a list of 100 best books from the last 25 years. Top of the list is Cormac McCarthy&amp;#039;s The Road, and I&amp;#039;m a little torn up about it.I think The Road is a really good (great, whatever) and I am glad McCarthy won the Pulitzer for it. But, BUT, it&amp;#039;s really frustrating that The Road has since become the McCarthy book to read. It is only if you need something to discuss with your friends who watch Oprah. I believe, at least within the limitations of this list, the better choice would be Blood Meridian, Or the Evening Redness in the West. The fact that people are smitten with The Road and not these other books bothers me so.  The Road is just as &amp;quot;vivid, eloquent, gripping, and ultimately beautiful,&amp;quot; as reviewers say, and it absolutely scared the fucking shit out of me\u2014I still wake up at night in a panic, convinced swaddled bandits are coming to eat me and my stash of Cheezdoodles. I thought the father son stuff was nice and moving\u2014the dynamic reminded me a bit of Billy and Boyd Parham from The Crossing, actually\u2014and the charred landscape matches my vision of the world post-everything awful I can imagine. But Blood Meridian, written in &amp;#039;85, is a far superior book (as are the other books too old to be included), and is the McCarthy you should get to. The Road drowns you with despair but keeps you afloat with the moral chirping of the young son. The love between the man and his son is touching, but I don&amp;#039;t feel either character did anything that anyone else wouldn&amp;#039;t do (I know, they are superior because they don&amp;#039;t eat people, but like most people would do in that situation, they were just trying to live). In fact, the characters all seemed like people any writer could come up with. And for all the fear of cannibals The Road instilled in me, Blood Meridian scarred me far more deeply. I wasn&amp;#039;t exactly scared of being scalped when I finished it\u2014I was more afraid that I might have it in me to scalp someone, that all I needed was a strong drink and the right opportunity. It&amp;#039;s people being bad because it&amp;#039;s fun, not because the world ended and there&amp;#039;s not a whole lot else left to do. Blood Meridian is better because there are so many more interesting, complex characters running around, and you have to earn the read. The language is dense, elliptical, gristled.The plot is convoluted.There&amp;#039;s a reason scholarship exists about Blood Meridian.There&amp;#039;s way more happening on every page than the reader can understand. The Road is a good, popular, accessible novel, and it was cool to see McCarthy nail a different setting. But Blood Meridian is Cormac McCarthy doing what he does best\u2014inventing new ways to use words, spinning subtle dialogue that carefully advances the plot, splattering epic, barbarian violence across the page.The Road is a good book, but it&amp;#039;s absolutely not his finest, and the people who think it&amp;#039;s the best book they&amp;#039;ve ever read should use it as an opportunity to go back and read the real stuff.  "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/entertainment/books/a32867/get-off-the-road-blog/>