Adam C

Wow. Blood Meridian is a literary masterpiece, perhaps THE great American novel. Highly recommend if you're looking for a book that will pull you in and not let you look away.

If you're sane, it will make you squirm and feel uncomfortable at times, that's for sure. But it's so worth it. I just finished reading it and am trying to decide if I want to read something new on my list or read this again. I think I'll let it digest and come back for a re-read in a couple months...it's so good.

You can open this book to any paragraph and read something that is amazing, or beautiful, or deep, or all 3; you can re-read and chew on it for a while, for example:

“Whatever in creation exists without my knowledge, exists without my consent”

Another:

“The universe is no narrow thing and the order within it is not constrained by any latitude in its conception to repeat what exists in one part in any other part. Even in this world more things exist without our knowledge than with it and the order in creation which you see is that which you have put there, like a string in a maze, so that you shall not lose your way. For existence has its own order and that no man's mind can compass, that mind itself being but a fact among others.”

(Those first 2 quotes are said by the same character)

One more:

“It was raining again and they rode slouched under slickers hacked from greasy half-cured hides and so cowled in these primitive skins before the gray and driving rain they looked like wardens of some dim sect sent forth to proselytize among the very beasts of the land.”

If you haven't read this book, you need to.

“The better part of me will be borne forever beyond the high stars, and my name will never die. Wherever Rome extends its power over the conquered world I will be on men's lips, and if a sacred poet has any power to prophesy the truth,
throughout the ages I will live on in fame.”

Ovid wasn't wrong! Some 2,000 years after he wrote that, I enjoyed this epic poem.

I will say, I think this book should be read after reading The Iliad, The Odyssey, and The Aeneid - you'll gain a much deeper appreciation for Metamorphoses by doing so.