All the Pretty Horses
by Cormac McCarthy
★ Top 25 book of 1992 · #17 on Best Books of 1992
Cormac McCarthy's 1992 novel is more romantic than his earlier, bleaker work, and it won the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award. It opens his Border Trilogy, an elegy for the American Frontier, written without quotation marks.
Best for: Readers who like Hemingway-like prose and elegiac stories of the American Frontier
All the Pretty Horses is #17 on BookWard's Best Books of 1992, out of 43 1992 books that cleared our data bar.
What All the Pretty Horses is about
In 1949, sixteen-year-old John Grady Cole learns that the Texas ranch where he grew up, his grandfather's, is about to be sold. With nothing left to keep him there, he persuades his friend Lacey Rawlins to ride south with him into Mexico. A younger boy who calls himself Jimmy Blevins attaches himself to them, riding a horse far too good for someone like him. At a big ranch in Coahuila, Grady's skill with horses earns him work as a trainer, and he falls for the owner's daughter, Alejandra. Her great aunt warns him what a woman can lose in that society.
McCarthy writes in a lyrical, stark voice that treats the land and the animals with the same seriousness as the people. It is a story of growing up, of love tangled with honor, and of a frontier world fading out.
All the Pretty Horses on the Best Books of 1992
All the Pretty Horses came out in 1992. Of the 43 books first published in 1992 that met BookWard's data bar, it ranks #17 on our Best Books of 1992 list.
Why it made the list: 228 readers have shelved it on Open Library; readers rate it 4 out of 5 (27 ratings). The list ranks each year’s books on how many readers have picked them up, how highly readers rate them, and how many are reading them right now.
Nearby on the 1992 list
- Diana, Her True Story Andrew Morton, #15
- Poor Things Alasdair Gray, #16
- Red Mars Kim Stanley Robinson, #18
- The Pelican Brief John Grisham, #19
See all Best Books of 1992 Best books by year
More years: Best Books of 1991 Best Books of 1993.
The numbers behind it
- Readers: 178 want to read it, 10 are reading it now and 40 have read it, according to Open Library.
- Ratings: 4 out of 5 from 27 Open Library ratings.
| Signal | This book (0 to 100) | Weight |
|---|---|---|
| Reach | 51 | 55% |
| Reader love | 53 | 25% |
| Being read right now | 49 | 20% |
Questions about All the Pretty Horses
When was All the Pretty Horses published?
All the Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy was first published in 1992.
Was All the Pretty Horses one of the best books of 1992?
All the Pretty Horses is #17 on BookWard's Best Books of 1992, out of 43 1992 books that cleared our data bar. 228 readers have shelved it on Open Library; readers rate it 4 out of 5 (27 ratings).
Why is All the Pretty Horses on the Best Books of 1992 list?
228 readers have shelved it on Open Library; readers rate it 4 out of 5 (27 ratings).
More of the best books of 1992
- Welcome to Dead House Robert Lawrence Stine, #1
- The Secret History Donna Tartt, #2
- The Indispensable Calvin and Hobbes Bill Watterson, #3
- Snow Crash Neal Stephenson, #4
- The Shadow Rising Robert Jordan, #5
- The Artist's Way Julia Cameron, #6
See the full Best Books of 1992, the Top 100, or new books on Rising.
How we know
This page uses public data: Open Library reader counts and ratings, and Wikipedia page views for recent years. The description is paraphrased from real source text. Rankings reflect reading interest, not quality or sales, and can be affected by data gaps. Lists update monthly.
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