A funny throw away line
Q. Are you the bitch who's fucking my husband?
A. I dunno. Who's your husband?

Told ya
Yep, I did.

Dear AV Club,

We already did this last time, but ok:

Hmmm. Let me try a few…
Spidey's gonna have to make a deal with the devil to save this one.

In the movie's defense, I believe that some of those people in that Griswolds in the Hood scene were latinos.

Gilliam's last film was his version of Alice. It was called Tideland.

This book is written in a really dense style. If you're the kind of person who could knock out The Brothers Karamazov in a single week, then you will have no problem. Otherwise, you probably won't make it.

Shenanigans
Well, we didn't really get to choose this book, or at least there was nothing like a consensus (I wouldn't mind hearing the story of how this book got chosen or who did the choosing from the dozens of books nominated).

You're not the only one. My copy finally arrived just on Friday and I didn't finish it until Tuesday and I wish that I'd had more time to spend with certain sections and that many others required rereads for me to fully get, but instead I had to charge through to get done on time (actually late).

I was thinking the same as Farmer John. I guess, based on AM and PM, the meridian is the time when the sun appears to be highest in the sky. So is this book describing the time when American violence was at its peak? That doesn't work for me, because I see McCarthy saying that we've always been violent and we still…

And in the middle of all this poetry? The Judge carrying a giant machine gun under his arm and lighting it with his cigar, Arnold Swarzennegar style. If this were a Hollywood movie, what would the Judge's catch phrase be?

If you want a little taste, Garth Ennis wrote some pumpkin fucking into his Return of Ma Gnucci saga in Punisher War Zone.

When you say the father sacrifices everything, if by that you mean that his sacrifice is continuing to survive in this miserable hell if a world, then I agree. If you mean he sacrifices his life for the boy, then I disagree. Without this little "god"/child that the father cannot help but worship, I think it's pretty…

Heart of Darkness
I was also noticing parallels between Blood Meridian and Heart of Darkness as I read, but I couldn't quite make it work out. Now, I see even more. Both books mention the white parts on a map (the last few truly wild, uncharted places). Obviously, both feature a journey into the savage wilderness…

Hope in The Road
I think The Road exposes hope as a sham. There is no real hope in the book—just biological drives that keep a few people from giving in to the misery of existence.

Ugh.
When I think of a book club, I think of people reading a book (preferably for the first time) and then coming together to share their own opinions about the book. It's not a class. It's not a discussion of scholarly articles. It's not a place to put forth other academics' interpretations as your own. Why are…

The author obviously was keeping us at a distance from the characters. Did we get inside a character's head even once in this book?

I thought the sparking of fires in the coda was just one more reminder that all fires are the same fire, going all the way back to that very first fire, which is a reminder that, fences or not, we are the violent, primitive beasts we always were. This idea is also in one of the opening quotes, which is about finding…

Loving this book club
Can you imagine any real life book club surviving these first two selections? This is the Anti-book club. Instead of reading the life affirming, sentimental Tuesday's With Morrie, The Notebook pap of a typical book club, the avclub gives us two grim, hopeless views of humanity with violent,…