All the Pretty Horses pg. 1-30

Cormac McCarthy's All the Pretty Horses is a nice break from the poetic and overly-descriptive novels we read during the first semester. The language is simple and easy to understand. The pages are appealing to the eye as they are broken up by short conversations as well as side stories based on different characters and their relationships. 

I find this book to be enjoyable so far. In the past I have been intimidated by the books we've read. Sure I say that the long descriptions just bore me, but what I am really saying is that they intimidate me. This is because the extensive vocabulary that is used in literature is hard for me to understand. Going into a new book I try to read for comprehension, but as soon as the author uses words that are not commonly heard in everyday conversation I begin to read for completion. I get intimidated by the work. I feel belittled and therefore not smart when I can't pick up the simple message that the author is trying to convey through the educated text. The straight-forward, simplistic vocabulary that has been used so far in All the Pretty Horses makes me feel better and smarter because I understand what is happening in the novel. I think that McCarthy's language and basic sentence structure makes it easier for his readers to understand the story. It's nice to read a book by an author who doesn't need frilly vocabulary to decorate his work; his lack of frilly vocabulary is what makes the story relatable and appealing to most people.

Having said that, I personally do not like the way McCarthy choses to start All the Pretty Horses. I feel as if I was just thrown into the middle of the novel and I am expected to know who each of the characters are, how they are related to one another, and why their relationships with each other are the way they are. It's confusing and difficult to follow. I caught myself having to go back and re-read pages in order to figure out if I was stilling reading about the father and the son or the mother and the son. Although I hate long descriptive paragraphs of irrelevant subjects such as the furnishings of a room or the season of the year, it would have been nice to have some basic description concerning who the characters were or even the plot of the story. All I got out of reading the first thirty pages was that there is a boy named John Grady Cole who lives in San Angelo, Texas and seems to have an estranged relationship with his father.

As you can see, I have a love-hate relationship so far with this book. I love the basic language but I hate not knowing what I am reading about. I'm lost as to how this story became and where it's going. However, I kind of enjoy that mysterious aspect of it as well. It is too soon to tell if I will like this book or not but it will be interesting how it all plays out and I can't wait for that to happen.