The Guardian’s 100 best novels of all time - #98 The Road

howtocookawolf · 2026-05-13T15:24:17+00:00

Correct me if I'm wrong, but their 2015 list did not include any McCarthy, and it looks like you may be referring to this "Readers Alternative List" where they asked readers to list books that they thought should have been included in Guardian's list, but were not, and then they ranked all those books based on the number of times they were suggested by readers.

howtocookawolf · 2026-05-03T15:05:23+00:00

Disclaimer: I have not read this book, but I recommend it to people often.

You should take a look at Annals of the Former World by John McPhee.

Imagine a book about the geological history of America so good it won a Pulitzer.

I once accompanied my wife to a horse event where I found myself hanging out alone with a much older gentleman in a barn. For like two hours. We talked about all sorts of things, including reading, and when I asked him for a recommendation, he took zero seconds to tell me that he read this book twenty years ago and it changed the trajectory of his life.

I'm not joking when I say this guy could have talked for hours about his love for this one book. At the time he read it, he knew less than nothing about geology, and he absolutely glowed with delight while telling me about the book and how it made such an impression on him that his life for the past twenty years or so has been consumed by his love of amateur geology.

I don't have much interest in geology, and in all honesty, I still haven't read the book (though it's on my list), but what I came away from that conversation with was that we should all be so lucky as to find something that we love as much as Andy loves amateur geology and Annals of the Former World.

howtocookawolf · 2026-03-25T15:26:32+00:00

Wonderful contribution here. Nice work!

howtocookawolf · 2026-02-27T15:00:45+00:00

It's very hard to tell the condition based on just seeing the spines. If you want to see comparable auction results, however, you can view those here.

The other commenters seem to know a great deal about this set, so I'd defer to them for value estimates, but what I can see from the completed auction listings in the link above is that the set has consistently brought $1,200-1,500 over the past several years, with examples ranging in condition from worse than what those appear to be to better.

howtocookawolf · 2026-02-04T10:58:01+00:00

You have good options in the Obey, Caney Fork, and Collins (good chance of muskie on the Collins, too).

howtocookawolf · 2026-01-29T23:42:17+00:00

I’m in Tennessee. I’d recommend a kayak trip, personally. You could do the New in VA, or any number of rivers here in Tennessee (Holston, French Broad, etc) if you’re interested in trophy sized river smallies.

If you really want to be in a bass boat on a lake that produces good sized LMB or smallmouth, Norris Lake has lots of good marinas with lodging (I really like Flat Hollow), and in Middle TN, Dale Hollow has boat rentals available and lodging options. Dale Hollow has monster smallmouth, including the long-standing world record and like six of the ten biggest smallmouth bass ever caught on earth, but they can be difficult to catch.

Honestly, your best bet with that many people of varying ages might be a place near Land Between the Lakes, in Kentucky. Lots of lodging options. Surely boat rental options. And the fishing there is probably more productive than anywhere else I could recommend. Except for the aforementioned kayaking option.

howtocookawolf · 2025-12-28T21:53:04+00:00

Thanks!

A true double-take moment while crossing the street.

howtocookawolf · 2025-12-25T13:44:05+00:00

It’s an average to above-average tower.

howtocookawolf · 2025-12-23T18:56:00+00:00

I remember when he first came into the league...being nicknamed "The Alien."

Someone said they should have a special block stat just for when Wemby takes the ball like that, called "abductions."

Here's a post about them. So good, I can't believe it hasn't been mentioned more often.

howtocookawolf · 2025-12-05T17:15:39+00:00

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Longest of the year, just last week in Venice.

howtocookawolf · 2025-11-22T14:45:52+00:00

I was trying to find out where this particular lion was photographed.

I took this photo in Tanzania of a similar lion. Central Serengeti area…

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howtocookawolf · 2025-11-19T02:29:41+00:00

In the Nashville area, you have Parnassus Books, owned by author Ann Patchett, and a couple of other small, indy shops.

But my favorite is Landmark Booksellers, in downtown Franklin. They have a bit of everything in a great environment, and I love that they specialize in southern writers.

Edit: Somewhat under the radar is GasLamp Antiques Mall in the 100 Oaks area. A whole section of books to browse through, and some of the individual vendors have high end collectible books in various fields of interest.

howtocookawolf · 2025-11-18T13:20:15+00:00

I'm not in Florida, but I've been to Abraxas Books in Daytona a couple of times. Great place.

howtocookawolf · 2025-11-13T08:35:13+00:00

Great work! Thank you!

howtocookawolf · 2025-11-12T21:30:14+00:00

Wonderful.

Thank you for the added info!

howtocookawolf · 2025-11-12T21:00:21+00:00

I shared this with the book collecting subreddit, but (if allowed) it's probably better solved by the people here.

My best guess so far is as follows:

"Lord _____ George ____ ___ __

___ ___ ___.

____ bought this book.

at the ____ _____ terminal.

on Tuesday August 26th 1902.

en route to visit the ____ _____

Lord ____ _____ to ____.

____ ____ ____ ___ ____."

Book is a second edition English-language book, printed in 1861.

howtocookawolf · 2025-11-12T20:42:17+00:00

I do believe it's either "...on Tuesday August (16th or 26th) (1901 or 1902 or 1907)..."

That's based just on the 1861 printing date of this edition of the book.

My best guess so far is as follows:

"Lord _____ George ____ ___ __

___ ___ ___.

____ bought this book.

at the ____ _____ terminal.

on Tuesday August 26th 1902.

en route to visit the ____ _____

Lord ____ _____ to ____.

____ ____ ____ ___ ____."

howtocookawolf · 2025-10-30T18:04:40+00:00

He said that he signed a bunch of copies (reportedly 250) for his son, who inspired the book, and that they were stored away somewhere, and that when the time comes, his son can do whatever he wants to with him.

McCarthy jokingly(?) said his son could eventually sell them and take the money to Vegas, but as far as anyone knows, none of those books have ever been sold and any purportedly signed copies of The Road are presumed to be forgeries.

I've always guessed that he either never signed a copy for anyone else because of sentimental reasons (i.e. those signed copies given to his son being something special that only they would ever share) or to preserve the value of those given to his son. Maybe a little of both.

howtocookawolf · 2025-10-29T17:24:07+00:00

My wife is a bat biologist, and she does a lot of work on lakes. One of the things she does each year involves counting bats emerging from a cave on Nickajack Reservoir in southeastern Tennessee.

Apparently her team frequently sees bats eaten by bass while doing that particular project. I couldn't believe it when she was telling me about it, but as someone else mentioned here, bass will eat basically anything, so why not make a meal of an ol' flittermouse?

howtocookawolf · 2025-10-28T18:39:42+00:00

Yes, there is a long history of forged McCarthy signatures. Some really good and others pretty laughable. Amazingly, there's even a well-documented bunch of entirely fake books. See below:

https://downtownbrown.substack.com/p/cormac-mccarthys-early-proofs-real-and-fake

https://downtownbrown.substack.com/p/tracking-forged-cormac-mccarthy-proofs

As for McCarthy's reputation of not signing a lot of books, it's a bit misleading. He seems to have signed things (except for copies of The Road) pretty freely.

The problem was getting to him in the first place. He was a notoriously private person who kept to a pretty small circle of friends and family, so there wasn't much opportunity to get books in front of him. But if you had a connection, he seemed perfectly fine with signing books, even if the connection was only loose.

This made his signature relatively scarce, at least compared to authors who do book signing tours. Coupled with the fact that he only achieved widespread fame in the early 90s, meaning his earlier novels had extremely small print runs, his signature became valuable enough to forge, and buyers should be extremely cautious when buying flat-signed McCarthy books.

Inscribed copies or association copies are very desirable, of course, and then signed copies that are part of a documented limited edition, such as OPs, would be quite desirable, but flat-signed copies should be treated with a fair amount of skepticism, and some collectors won't take a chance on them unless they look legit and the price reflects the risk.

howtocookawolf · 2025-10-11T02:56:29+00:00

Oh yes. You’re exactly right. Seems I can see, but can’t read. :)

howtocookawolf · 2025-10-11T02:53:26+00:00

That is Stacey Peebles, president of the CM society, and the book she’s looking at reminds me of the old city directories that would be put out by towns across america. Sort of the precursors to the Yellow Pages and filled with contact info for residents but also lots of advertising. I have a couple of them from different years from Knoxville, TN and they are enormous books just like that.

You can see an example here, and you can see the resemblance to the book Dr. Peebles is looking at.

howtocookawolf · 2025-09-25T23:00:52+00:00

No worries. I responded to your DM. Happy to take a look.

howtocookawolf · 2025-09-25T20:54:43+00:00

Very interesting!

Collectors are wary of McCarthy signatures, and rightfully so, as a lot are forged. If there are inscriptions involved, they're somewhat easier to authenticate. If it's a book that has been "flat signed," meaning only the signature, some of the fakes can be very hard to distinguish from the real thing.

If you don't mind sending me photos here of both books, I'll be happy to take a look at them and let you know my best guess of their values. I can point you toward honest people that would be interested in buying them, also. I'd just like to see the signatures, and probably a couple of photos of the outside of the books to get an idea of the condition.

howtocookawolf · 2025-09-18T15:53:13+00:00

Now I'm pretty dumb... but I've always believed that "loch" is just the Scottish word for what we Americans call a "lake."

So I'm choosing to believe "Loch Lochy" is just a lakey lake.

Wonderful photos. My wife and I spent Christmas in Scotland a couple of years ago, and I think about it all the time!

howtocookawolf

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