No Country for Old Men

Really enjoyed this one. Couldn't put it down, in fact. My favorite reads are thrillers but I do have a taste for good writing and I try to familiarize myself with those folks deemed "great writers".

I had read "All the pretty horses" and, frankly, missed the point. "No Country.." offered McCarthy's great style with a plot line that kept me riveted.

Be warned, this is not a conventional thriller and you will not find a neatly packaged ending. If you'd like to try a thriller with a bit more literary content, this is a great choice.

Super narrator, as well!

This is my first "reading" of Cormac McCarthy. I have rarely been so moved by words - I am still not sure if it is McCarthy, or the artfull reading by Tom Stechschulte, but either way I was enveloped by McCarthy's world and embraced both Bell and Moss as well-repected personal friends.

In a world of that demands black and white, I appreciate a writer that can draw onw into the gray and ask the question -- what would I do?

Give me more of both writer and narrator.

If you like Chinatown, Tarantino movies and James Ellroy, this is one for you. A crime story with dark overtones, extremely well narrated by Tom Stechschulte. The flow is good, the characters (good and bad) interesting, and the tension high. Perhaps a small note of doubt is sown by the fact that some of the main characters do incredibly dumb things, but McCarthy fashioned the book this way, so who am I to argue? Eventually it kinda fizzles out though.

McCarthy is always brilliant. I read "No Country" when it was first published, and I've listened to the audio version three (or has it been it four?) times. I've rarely recommended an audio book instead of the "real" version, but I'll do just that in this case for one very good reason: I can't imagine a better reader than Tom Stechschulte (if only it were possible to commission Mr.Stechschulte to read "Suttree," which is my favorite McCarthy novel).

This book has violence, insight, humor, love, respect, honor and depth beyond the story line. Narrator: Tom Stechschulte is excellent. He makes the characters come to life.
I could not put it down. This book will make you rethink some of your own values and appreciate your life for what it is. At least it did for me. The "country" wisdom is put in a take it or leave it fashion that does not seem forced on you but lets you draw your own conclusion. Very enjoyable listen.

I saw its movie coming out and thought I would enjoy the audiobook first. I greatly enjoyed the pace of the book and the personalities shown forth. There were a few times that his descriptions were a little vague as I tried to imagine the scene in my head and found a few details lacking, but overall I would consider that a minor problem. I then saw the movie. Even though they certainly got the main events of the book right, the "feel" of it didn't quite compare. To those that saw the movie and are on the fence, I would urge you to enjoy the audiobook and enjoy greater character development and a superior unfolding of the storyline. Give it one more chance.

If you liked the movie, you'll love this audio book. It is very well read and you will re-live every scene in the movie in your head. The narrator's voices really have a lot of depth and authenticity. You will realize just how good the Coen brothers are when you see how well they adapted this book. Awesome!

I recently saw the movie and couldn't stop thinking about it. I decided to check out the audio book even though i was a bit worried that since I knew how it ended that I would find it boring. I was not disappointed even though the Movie was an excellent adapation of the book there was still alot of content and dialog the book offered that made it very enjoyable and difficult to tear myself away.

Mr Mcarthy has a gift with words and storys I am totally in awe of how of how he can pull the reader into the story with the detail and dialog of the characters while at the same time forcing the reader to use the reader to think and use their imagination.

There is a lot of action and violence in the book to keep you interested but its the dialog of the characters that make it great!

The Narrator is great as well he does a fantistic Job of making the book feel authentic. He also makes it easy for you to tell the diffence between characters with the tone and style of his voice which not all narrators can do. I will now look for him on future books I pick.

I hated "The Road." But everyone is all "Cormac McCarthy is the greatest American writer!" and maybe I just wasn't giving him a fair chance. So I gave him another. I haven't seen the movie, but I decided to listen to "No Country for Old Men" since it was relatively short.

McCarthy could grow on me. This book didn't have all the meandering and forced prose of "The Road"; indeed, it was sparse, clear writing, not at all what I was expecting. The story is a fairly simple one: a Texas good ol' boy out hunting comes across a drug deal gone bad, and decides to make off with the money. The rest of the story follows from that decision and from several other decisions he makes along the way. This is the "literary" angle that hooked me, the fact that every action each character took had definite and clear consequences, even if they weren't immediate. Moral consequences, albeit sometimes according to the alien morality of people like Anton Chigurh, the scary, implacable hit-man who stalks through every page of the book.

If you're at all familiar with McCarthy, you know not to expect rosy outcomes. There's a lot of death and the ending is bleak. I felt the tension went completely slack in the last couple of chapters, and we were left with just an old man grumbling about past mistakes and the state of the world. Also, Chigurh, indubitably the star of the book, was well-drawn but in very sketchy strokes. He's a grayscale figure who's there to scare you and deliver the coup de grace; he's an archetype, but there's really not that much there to him.

That aside, it's a great book if you like tight, sparse, masculine Westerns (which is pretty much what "No Country for Old Men" is, a noir Western set in the present). After being thoroughly unimpressed with the first book I read by Cormac McCarthy, the second one changed my opinion, and I'm now willing to read something else by him.

It's been a long time since we've heard from Cormac McCarthy, and this story will leave you feeling it was well worth waiting for. This book is beautifully written, and has great character development; some will scare you to death and some will leave you full of admiration. Tom Stechschulte's narration is -as always- first rate and brings everyone to life. After listening to the book the first time, I immediately listened to the whole thing again - something I never do- to make sure I really captured the complicated tale.