What Western are you reading?

[Dave Hardy]

I thought I'd start a thread where we could post what Westerns we've read lately. I've got a stash of Western paperbacks I've been saving up & thought now was an opportune time.

I just started on Devil's Graze, a collection of short-stories & novellas by Frank Bonham. I've read a fair bit of his stuff from things he wrote for the pulps to his later novels like Snaketrack, he's pretty good.

Apologies if this is a duplicate thread, but I didn't see any other like this in the Western forum.

 

[Straggler]

I'm in the middle of Tim McGuire's Rainmaker series.

 

[Dave Hardy]

I finished Devil's Graze. Bonham was one of the best. The stories could be conventional cavalry or cowboy stories, but he could also do one about hop-pickers in Oregon or a wagon-train of women going West to find husbands.

I started Border Wolves by Walt Coburn. Again, it's a good set of pulp Westerns. The stories lean a bit towards the hard-boiled.

 

[Dave Hardy]

Finished the Coburn book. It was surprisingly hard-boiled. A couple of the tale were interesting takes on Romeo & Juliet, but with a lot more emphasis on the murderous feud than the romance. The third was a contemporary story about drug smugglers & people traffickers on the Border in the 1920s.

I got a copy of Lost Cause, Jack Jackson's graphic novel about the Sutton-Taylor feud & John Wesley Hardin.

 

[Dave Hardy]

I read Trailing West, by Louis L'Amour, fun but pretty much formula. I took a break from Westerns to read Sharpe's Sword, and I'm starting back with King Charlie by Max Brand.

BTW, if you get the chance, buy anything by Jack Jackson. I can't speak highly enough of his Texas history books, in graphic novel form or otherwise.

 

[ElisabethF]

I'm about to begin Sundown Slim by Henry Herbert Knibbs. I've read three of his books so far and he's become one of my favorite early Western writers. Most recently, I've read a couple by my favorite author, B.M. Bower, The Dry Ridge Gang and Meadowlark Basin.

 

[Dave Hardy]

I finished King Charlie a while back. It's an odd sort of Western. It begins when a hobo cons a youth into thinking he's the kid's father. Anyway, there's safecracking, an orphan girl, a death-trap, dudes from back East, &c. Kind of fun in that Brand knew all the cliches (I'm pretty sure he invented a few) but could re-arrange them in strange ways.

Also read Caine's Trail by Cameron Judd. It was OK, but a bit routine.

 

[Dave Hardy]

HH Knibbs & ERB

I'm about to begin Sundown Slim by Henry Herbert Knibbs. I've read three of his books so far and he's become one of my favorite early Western writers.

I googled Knibbs, and was surprised to discover he was Edgar Rice Burroughs' favorite poet:

THE POEM THAT INSPIRED THE MUCKER

The Mucker is one of ERB's most hard-boiled yarns. It's about an American hoodlum who gets castaway on a Pacific Island inhabited by a lost tribe of samurai. I read it years ago. Any of y'all Tarzan or John Carter fans should read The Mucker.

Thanks for mentioning Knibbs!

EDIT: a quick peak at REHupa confirmed Robert E Howard was a Knibbs fan too!

 

[Ari Meermans]

Just picked up Robert B. Parker's RESOLUTION for my husband today. He gets to read it after I'm finished.

 

[ULTRAGOTHA]

I just finished re-reading the script for the Firefly episode "Heart of Gold".

 

[Bloo]

I've got Parker's Gunmen's Rhapsody and Matt Braun's Doc Holliday sitting on my Kindle right now waiting to be read. And my perputual objective or working my way through Elmore Leonard's westerns

 

[Ari Meermans]

RESOLUTION was a pretty good read. It's got yer two rich(er) characters battling to own the town, hired gunslingers on both sides, hapless sodbusters caught in the middle, and a fair dose of gunslinger philosophizin' for good measure. Typical fare, told well.

 

[Libby]

I just finished reading The Sisters Brothers. And I thought it was just great.
I really believe that if this is where westerns are going, we are in for some real treats in the next couple of years.

 

[Dave Hardy]

I recently read Johnny Boggs' The Big Fifty. It's a very entertaining novel about buffalo hunters, Comanches, kids with dime novel fixations, and big rifles. I'll probably be reading more of Boggs' stuff.

Just for variety, I'm currently reading Lone Star Justice, part one of Robert Utley's Texas Ranger history.

 

[Dave Hardy]

Recently read Dane Coolidge's The Wild Bunch (no relation to the Peckinpah movie). I have to say it was superb, with an amazing way of weaving geography (the fact of the Western wilderness) into the story. I loved the characters who live by strict personal codes, and treat the law in a free and easy manner. I wonder why I never heard of Coolidge before?

 

[Arislan]

Dave, thanks for your comments on my WIP at SYW. I replied to it. I'm going on a trip tonight and I'm taking along Shane and The Ox-Bow Incident. Hopefully I'll learn a thing or two about a thing or two that will influence my writing in the right direction.

 

[John Olexa]

I'm a wild west /civil war history buff.
Just started reading "Doc Holliday A Family Portrait" By Karen Holliday Tanner. So far really good! She has the advantage of being a cousin of him and has had access to family only stuff! Seems hollidays family members have refused to cooperate with researchers in the past. Theres pics of his mother, Doc as an infant and a lot more plus good "true' reading about Holliday.

 

[Dave Hardy]

I just finished Long Way to Texas by Elmer Kelton (though it was originally published under a pseudonym). Pretty good Rebs-Yanks-Indians yarn in Civil War-era New Mexico.

 

[knightrunnermat]

I just finished reading The Sisters Brothers. And I thought it was just great.
I really believe that if this is where westerns are going, we are in for some real treats in the next couple of years.

I read this book when it first came out and absolutely loved it. It definitely had a slight influence on the direction I am currently taking my WIP.

 

[thehundreds]

Probably read two westerns in my life, but I just put down Lonesome Dove (which I'm sure everyone and their mother's have read by this point). What an incredible story. I will admit that it had a bit of a slow start, and the writing is sneakily mundane at points (which only disguises the wonders that Mcmurty can do prose-wise, his skills coming out the most during those action scenes), but I'm seriously going to miss Augustus and Call . . . such classic characters.

 

[Dave Hardy]

Probably read two westerns in my life, but I just put down Lonesome Dove (which I'm sure everyone and their mother's have read by this point). What an incredible story. I will admit that it had a bit of a slow start, and the writing is sneakily mundane at points (which only disguises the wonders that Mcmurty can do prose-wise, his skills coming out the most during those action scenes), but I'm seriously going to miss Augustus and Call . . . such classic characters.

I remember reading Lonesome Dove while I was living in Prague. I bought a second-hand cop at the Globe Cafe & Bookstore. It was something special to escape into a Western adventure while I was living a European one.

I've read a bunch of books since I last checked. I read Rangers of the Lone Star & Last of the Duanes by Zane Grey. They were badly mangled by editors a hundred years ago and the restored texts are in the new paperbacks. They are very much in the style of 1913, and aspects may seem corny, but the core of the stories, a merciless covert war between law and lawlessness, where allegiances and identities are concealed or confused, is a strong one.

Right now I'm reading The Funeral of Tanner Moody, an anthology of stories about a single character by different authors (including my friend James Reasoner). Lots of fun!

 

[Vito]

"Sergeant Houck" by Jack Schaefer

 

[Dave Hardy]

In the Rogue Blood by James Carlos Blake.

 

[Dave Hardy]

I'm currently reading Blue Kingdom by Max Brand. It's fun and little bit eccentric with stuff about Medieval Scottish ancestors and a trickster hero. Very Max Brand.

BTW, just to prove I'm not a totally lazy slob (OK, I am, I am bone idle, I'm so lazy I had someone type this for me), I posted a 5k short story in SYW.

 

[John Olexa]

"Encyclopedia of Western Lawmen & Outlaws" By Jay Robert Nash