"Lonesome Dove" by Larry McMurtry (★★★★★) Good lord. Highest recommendation. A band of former Texas Rangers makes their living stealing cattle from the Mexicans, who in turn steal the cattle from them. This is their way of life. There's liquor and lots of prostitutes. Their captain decides to take an especially large herd (of cattle, not prostitutes) and drive them from the Rio Grande to Montana. There are dangers along the way. Absolutely ruthless. Fantastic dialog and characterization. High action and badassery, yet you're also seeing men risking fragile lives, and it can all end quickly. This is one of those western deconstructions that wound up reclaiming the form. I feel like I'm late on the wagon with this one. It won the Pulitzer in 1986 and deserved it. Smokes the last generation's winners, even the great ones. I'm not going to say more because if you like books like say, "No Country For Old Men," you won't want this one spoiled.
I read it a good thirty years ago and recall enjoying it. Of all things, the water moccasin attack sticks in my head.
That's my dad's favorite book of all time. In fairness, he's not a reader. I've known him to read maybe half a dozen books in my lifetime (including mine!) but it was not only one of the few to get and keep his attention, it was the only one he's raved about for decades. I've read (mostly audiobooked) well over 700 titles, but for some reason, I've never gotten around to this one. I should bump it up the list. I'd like to have one book I could talk about with my dad. (We have plenty to talk about. There's no problem there, but literature is a great love of mine, and not something we've shared.)
By all means read -- or listen to -- the book at your earliest convenience and talk to your dad about it. There are several books my dad loved and I didn't get around to reading until after he was gone, and I regret not having those conversations.
I recently finished that and rated it 4.5 stars. I had already read the two prequels (Dead Man’s Walk & Comanche Moon) so for me Lonesome Dove was the final installment of McMurtry’s epic western trilogy. And a tremendous ending it proved to be. Out of the three books, I actually hold Dead Man’s Walk in the highest esteem, for a variety of reasons — better supporting characters, better plot, younger and therefore more dynamic/developing Gus and Call. But the last one hundred pages or so of Lonesome Dove are near perfect in my estimation, jam-packed with emotional and thematic weight; so I can understand why most people regard it as the best of the bunch.
It's a great book, one I didn't want to end when reading it just before turn of century during train commute to work. The conversation with your dad will be easy because it's one to be excited about.
I'm actually really happy to hear you like the others better, because I'll definitely be getting to them too. I would never have considered reading Westerns back in the day, but every time I pick one up, it's top notch writing. I think I already know who the champs of the genre are and I'm gravitating toward them. I might have to check out what the current market holds. I know it's niche. I'm curious what's there.
@Seven Crowns To be clear, I only like Dead Man’s Walk more, and it’s a small preference on account of Lonesome Dove’s legendary ending. Comanche Moon, while good, isn’t at the level of the other two imo. If I could be so bold as to put forward a western recommendation for you: Shane by Jack Schaefer. I love that book with my heart and soul. It has a marvelous ending, and I was left awe-struck by the simple beauty and fit of its final sentence. Shane’s slow-burning and ever rising tension towards its climax is an all too rare and unforgettable literary experience. Opinions do vary, of course. Happy reading.
I've seen that on the top lists but haven't read it. I've read all of Elmore Leonard's Westerns and some of Cormac McCarthy's. And I guess "True Grit" as well, which was very good. I feel like that genre is just ignored these days, by people like me, I guess. It's as if we're too modern for it, but sometimes you've just had enough of the modern world. Thanks for the recommendation! I will put it high in my to-read list.
My son, the cowboy, loves Louis Lamour. He's read every book multiple times. Once I went in a small second hand store in a tiny Wyoming town and found an entire collection of LL paperbacks for a quarter each. Yep, I bought them all and now he has a full collection.
I haven't caught up here in a little while, so here's my list of often disappointing books from the last month or so: The Mithermage trilogy by Orson Scott Card - Two solid 4.25 star books followed by a 2.5 star flop. I'm not one to preach "show, don't tell," but good God, the exposition. It was interminable. Beside which, he spent a ton of time on his magic system in the first two books just to throw most of it out the window in the third. I also didn't care for the fact that the MC could use logic leaps to solve anything. It felt like he was guessing his way through the entire adventure and was never wrong once. Looking back, some of these things were problems in the first two books as well. Maybe I just didn't get fed up until the third book. Crompton Divided by Robert Sheckley - 2.5 stars. Sheckley disappoints me again. I read a couple of amazing sci-fi books several years ago, so I keep coming back, looking for another gem, but I can't seam to find one. I call it Philip K Dick syndrome. Tuck Everlasting by Natalie Babbit - 3.25 stars. What can I say? It was a book written for 11 year olds. It was good for what it was. The Turn of the Screw by Henry James - 2.25 stars. Emma Thompson did a bang up job narrating the audiobook, but I couldn't get into it. It's all about atmosphere, and I'm all about story and character. If you enjoy gothic ghost stories, you'll probably like this one, but it wasn't for me. Hocus Pocus by Kurt Vonnegut - 3 stars. It's Vonnegut, and Vonnegut was a genius. I still didn't love it. With this book, I've officially read every novel by Vonnegut, and I firmly believe that with the exception of Timequake, he did all of his best work between 1959 and 1973. Hocus Pocus was basically the same book as Dead Eye Dick, Bluebeard and a couple of others from the era. They're all memoirs by characters who aren't particularly endearing. They tease/spoil the climax throughout the book and repeat themselves constantly. They're not bad, exactly, but they're only mildly compelling, almost tiresome when compared to Sirens of Titan or Slaughterhouse-Five. The Girl Who Drank the Moon by Kelly Barnhill - 4.25 Stars. A charming little fantasy story about a kind old witch, a tiny dragon who believes he's enormous, a swamp monster who's fond of poetry and a brave little girl. The characters were lovable and the story was fairly unique. It was hardly life changing, but it's still a decent adventure worth reading. Walking to Aldebaran by Adrian Tchaikovsky - 4.25 Stars. This is the second Tchaikovsky novella I've read after Made Things, which I adored. This one was good, too, clever and unique, if somewhat bleak. Plus, I was really fiending for some sci-fi, and this hit the spot. I don't buy that jazz about there being no new ideas left in the world. Sure, our stories all share elements, but some writers are still capable of creating material that is original and surprising. I need to read one of his series sometime soon. They're supposed to be great. If they're as good as his short work, I'll be in for a treat. Lastly, my son and I finished book 6 of How to Train your Dragon. 4 stars. It takes us a while to get through a book because he's only here half the time and we don't always get ready for bed in time to listen to our stories. These books are so worth the wait, though. I feared we'd get tired of them before now, but we haven't. Will we make it through all 11? I hope so.
Well, I finished the Beautiful Creatures tetralogy plus the novelette. I'll admit, I do enjoy a good YA distraction every once in a while. These weren't bad. 3.5 to 4 stars. I had intended to continue with the other four novelettes and sequel duology, but rather desperately needed a book for grownups at that point. I found a good one, too. I'm a few hours into the audiobook of Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison, masterfully performed by Joe Morton (Terminator 2: Judgement Day and many other great movies.) So far, this book is surreal and poetic and amazing. I am so impressed.
Finished The Undertaking of Hart and Mercy (a rom/com with very interesting worldbuilding... and zombies!). I dont read many rom/coms.... in fact, if i'm going by my "Book Lovers Journal" entries, i have not read a single rom/com in the last 2 years. but i really loved this one and the "wild west" feel of it AND the fact that there was the added twist about the zombies. would recommend! I switched from reading Wild Spaces to listening to the audio. Its a 2 hour audio and, in my opinion, her (the author's) words just sound so much better out loud than reading it on the page. its very descriptive and lyrical and i'm just enjoying it better as an audio. Its a horror novella. the reviews on it say "Can a horror story be beautiful? Wild Spaces tells a terrible truth in the most achingly beautiful way"-- Alma Katsu I agree, the words ARE very beautiful and haunting. I also checked out a book of poetry. This Day Is Dark by r.h. Sin. Its been a while since i've resonated with poetry like this... some of them are so true that i feel myself wanting to cry. then it makes me sad that i still feel that way (or else, why would it affect me so much?) "The optimism is denial I've been forcing myself to think positively despite negative feelings I keep building bridges instead of a boat I continue to make excuses to smother the truth..." (This Day Is Dark, page 57)
I'm still working on Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison, and it's still great, but it's a little heavy for bedtime, so I started in on Mogworld by Yahtzee Croshaw and got hooked. If you're a gamer and you've never seen Zero Punctuation, find it on YouTube immediately. It's a series of foul mouthed but hilarious game reviews going back fifteen or so years now. Back in 2010, Yahtzee, creator of Zero Punctuation, released his first novel, and I finally got around to it on audiobook read by the author himself. I finished it in a few days. It's one of the funniest things I've ever heard or read. I would put it up against The Hitchhiker's Guide or Year Zero. It's that funny. 4.5 Stars, and I will be listening to Jam, his second book, the first chance I get. He said in an afterword of a game review, "It's about an apocalypse. WITH JAM IN IT."
The cycle of arwyn. The world building is interesting, but the characters seem a bit flat. Which makes the series a slog. I give it a 2.5, and that is generous. Next up is the latest in the dungeon crawler carl series. Which is a fun litrpg novel about the end of the world being an alien reality show along the lines of wipeout. The stories in the series are about a 3.5, while the creativity is a definite 5.
I've only read Jam of his, but I liked it. Definitely recommend. I played his adventure games when I was young and could only really get my hands on freeware (Rob Blanc, 5 Days a Stranger).
I'm roughly halfway through Y is for Yesterday by Sue Grafton, the last book of my summer mystery marathon.
Books I've finished/read in the last week: Gormenghast by Mervyn Peake Four Found Dead by Natalie Richards Allegedly by Tiffany D. Jackson Book I'm starting next: The Resurrectionist: the Lost Work of Dr. Spencer Black by E.D. Hudspeth
My husband finished Y is for Yesterday this evening. I finished it last week. When he closed the book, he looked across the room at me and said, "Okay, now what do we read?" I've started several books but none held my interest. I either put them down or skimmed for plot and called it good. Finding the Mother Tree by Suzanne Simard is on my reading table right now, but i haven't started it.
Finished The Resurrectionist, and it was such a fascinating little monstrosity. I say that with admiration and appreciation. One of the coolest books I've read. Next up is probably Words of Radiance by Brandon Sanderson or the fifth Wheel of Time book by Robert Jordan.
After the fourth book in the series, it seemed like Jordan was recycling the same plot, just changing locations
I skimmed a book called The 19th Wife by David Ebershoff then this evening picked up The Wind Knows My Name by Isabel Allende.
20 master plots by Ronald Tobias. Just started, but this is a deep dive into plots. It also compares plot conventions over time. Plot conventions were different in the time of Dickens or Tolstoy than they are today.
I will rank these highest to lowest. I think some of these are probably more important than the stars I give, historically, I mean. Then again, maybe some of them deserve to be forgotten. The Collected Tales of Nikolai Gogol by Nikolai Gogol (★★★★★) Diary of a Madman and Other Stories by Nikolai Gogol (★★★★★) Oedipus the King by Sophocles (★★★★★) Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier (★★★★★) The Killer Angels by Michael Shaara (★★★★ 1/2) Starship Troopers by Robert A. Heinlein (★★★ 1/2) I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou (★★★) The Waste Land by T.S. Eliot (★★★) The Last of the Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper (★ 1/2) Awayland by Ramona Ausubel (★ 1/2) Lord Jim Joseph Conrad (★) Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf (Mr. Yuck sticker, half a star . . . I guess) I read all the short stories of Gogol, and it's hard to list the books they're from. It was just a big collection. The famous collection contains the Nevsky Prospekt stories, which are a series of tales that occur in this Russian neighborhood. They're pretty dark with flourishes of the fantastic. These include "Diary of a Madman" (Sharronn!) , "The Overcoat", "The Nose", etc. Basically any major short story of Gogol's that gets mentioned is from that collection . . . I think the collection might be more properly called the "Arabesques" book. Nevsky Prospekt was one of the big stories from it. Forgive me if I've mixed that up. All of the stories were kind of squashed together from different collections. Anyway, they're very, very good stories and read a bit like Kafka's "Metamorphosis" in their approach. (My favorite was "The Portrait." A portrait with lifelike eyes destroys those who own it.) There is another set of stories that are more fabulist in nature. Truthfully, those aren't so much to my liking, but they're okay. They have the feel of "Master and Margarita" or "Alice in Wonderland." I think they're really coming from Russian folktales about Baba Yaga. But my favorite set of Gogol stories never gets mentioned. It's the four tales from a book called "Mirgorod," which is a small Ukranian town. The dialog from them is so unbelievably funny. My favorite story from there was "The Old World Landowners." Spoiler: Stupidly long excerpt. It's old-timey, but I find it so funny. They feel like Charles Dickens characters. Sometimes when the weather was clear, and the rooms were very much heated, Afanasii Ivanovich got merry, and loved to tease Pulcheria Ivanovna, and talk of something out of the ordinary. “Well, Pulcheria Ivanovna,” he said, “what if our house were to suddenly burn down, what would become of us?” “God forbid!” ejaculated Pulcheria Ivanovna, crossing herself. “Well, now, just suppose a case, that our house should burn down. Where should we go then?” “God knows what you are saying, Afanasii Ivanovich! How could our house burn down? God will not permit that.” “Well, but if it did burn?” “Well, then, we should go to the kitchen. You could occupy for a time the room which the housekeeper now has.” “But if the kitchen burned too?” “The idea! God will preserve us from such a catastrophe as the house and the kitchen both burning down. In that case, we could go into the storehouse while a new house was being built.” “And if the storehouse burned also?” “God knows what you are saying! I won’t listen to you! it is a sin to talk so, and God will punish you for such speeches.” But Afanasii Ivanovich, content with having had his joke over Pulcheria Ivanovna, sat quietly in his chair, and smiled. But the old people were most interesting of all to me when they had visitors. Then everything about their house assumed a different aspect. It may be said that these good people only lived for their guests. They vied with each other in offering you everything which the place produced. But the most pleasing feature of it all to me was, that, in all their kindliness, there was nothing feigned. Their kindness and readiness to oblige were so gently expressed in their faces, so became them, that you involuntarily yielded to their requests. These were the outcome of the pure, clear simplicity of their good, sincere souls. Their joy was not at all of the sort with which the official of the court favors you, when he has become a personage through your exertions, and calls you his benefactor, and fawns at your feet. No guest was ever permitted to depart on the day of his arrival: he must needs pass the night with them. “How is it possible to set out at so late an hour upon so long a journey!” Pulcheria Ivanovna always observed. (The visitor usually lived three or four versts from them.) “Of course,” said Afanasii Ivanovich, “it is impossible on all accounts; robbers, or some other evil men, will attack you.” “May God in his mercy deliver us from robbers!” said Pulcheria Ivanovna. “And why mention such things at night? Robbers, or no robbers, it is dark, and no fit time to travel. And your coachman, … I know your coachman; he is so weak and small, any horse could kill him; besides, he has probably been drinking, and is now asleep somewhere.” And the visitor was obliged to remain. But the evening in the warm, low room, cheerful, strewn with stories, the steam rising from the food upon the table, which was always nourishing, and cooked in a masterly manner—this was his reward. I seem now to see Afanasii Ivanovich bending to seat himself at the table, with his constant smile, and listening with attention, and even with delight, to his guest. The conversation often turned on politics. The guest, who also emerged but rarely from his village, frequently with significant mien and mysterious expression of countenance, aired his surmises, and told how the French had formed a secret compact with the English to let Bonaparte loose upon Russia again, or talked merely of the impending war; and then Afanasii Ivanovich often remarked, without appearing to look at Pulcheria Ivanovna: “I am thinking of going to the war myself. Why cannot I go to the war?” “You have been already,” broke in Pulcheria Ivanovna. “Don’t believe him,” she said, turning to the visitor; “what good would he, an old man, do in the war? The very first soldier would shoot him; by Heaven, he would shoot him! he would take aim, and fire at him.” “What?” said Afanasii Ivanovich. “I would shoot him.” “Just listen to him!” interposed Pulcheria Ivanovna. “Why should he go to the war? And his pistols have been rusty this long time, and are lying in the storeroom. If you could only see them! the powder would burst them before they would fire. He will blow his hands off, and disfigure his face, and be miserable forever after!” “What’s that?” said Afanasii Ivanovich. “I will buy myself new arms: I will take my sword or a Cossack lance.” See how the husband keeps teasing the wife and irritating her? That entertains me to no end. Anyway, I loved these stories and I'm going to get a copy of that Mirgorod book. I'm going to get a Soviet export of it from the 1950s. I've found a couple good copies of it for sale for not too much money. It's propaganda, more or less, just meant to spread Russian culture. In this case, they deserve to brag. Gogol's the man. (Gogol is Ukranian, but you get my drift.) --------------------------------- I listened to Oedipus Rex on Naxos audio. That may be the most fantastic reading ever. I feel sorry for Oedipus. He was cursed by the gods before he was born. He tried to keep everyone safe and avoid the curse, but Fate is not to be denied. Okay, so he was arrogant, but being polite wouldn't have saved him. -------------------------------- "The Killer Angels" is the only Pulitzer Civil War book that has any actual civil war in it. In this case, Gettysburg. I was rooting for Lee. Spoiler, he loses. I'm just joking around, but it does show the angst of General Longstreet, the second general in command, who knew that the attack was hopeless and would end in slaughter. POV switches to the north too. My favorite character there was General Buford. His story was awesome. Hmm . . . he's played by Sam Eliot in an old Gettysburg movie. I might have to watch that. The POVs jump around to the generals. Or most of them do. That's the main difference between this book and the other Pulitzer Civil War books, which don't show any generals in action. (Those other books being: Gone With the Wind, March, Andersonville.) -------------------------------- "Rebecca" was fantastic. Just beautifully written. It has an actual story too, unlike another book from the early 20th century time period which sank to the bottom of my list. I'm not going to dignify that one with any words. . . Rebecca is a gothic romance/mystery with a sense of ghostliness and dread. Rebecca is the dead wife in the story. I didn't see the plot shift coming at all. Is it a plot twist? Maybe. It's just a change in direction. The story didn't go where I thought it would go. Well, maybe in some ways, but definitely not in others. I liked the main character quite a bit. She's nice and somewhat awkward. She's coming into this world as a commoner, which makes her relatable. What I found universal about her was how she had to measure up to this ideal that she could never reach. We can all relate to that, I think. You could feel her stress and despair. Rebecca, you see, was perfect. She was smart, cultured, sophisticated, charming, beautiful, etc. I mean that whenever Rebecca is mentioned, it's because she's just the best and oh so much better than the MC. Taller, nicer hair, better dresser, better handwriting, threw better parties, understands the servants more, I could go on but it's almost funny how she's always better in even the smallest detail. Good luck filling her shoes as the new wife. I really felt the poor MC's struggle because no one could ever measure up to Rebecca. Excellent book. Genius dialog. Shifts in setting. Atmospherically foreboding.
