(5) Tree Line
No Country for Old Men is also no book for beginner readers. It's not just the subject matter that's challenging: the book is written with purposefully obfuscating methodology. Which means it's supposed to be obscure and confusing.
The irony, of course, is that Cormac McCarthy would never use words like "obfuscating" or "methodology." Even "purposefully" might have too many syllables. The characters speak in a short, clipped style, using simple words. You've probably heard the phrase "Don't use a five-dollar word when a fifty-cent one will do." Well, if that's the case, then this whole book would probably cost fifty cents. (Don't tell Vintage International.) The words themselves are that simple.
So what makes the book so hard to read if you don't need to keep the dictionary app on your phone open long enough to drain the battery? It's the style of writing. McCarthy, for example, must think quotation marks cost ten bucks each, because he never uses them. It's hard to tell who's talking and when.
McCarthy also barely uses commas and apostrophes, but he does creates confusing contractions and run-on sentences that would have your high-school writing teaching tearing her hair out. So, if you notice you're shedding a bit, turn to our plot summary for clarification, pardner. Were sticklers for punctuation. We mean we're! We're!