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  • 4 weeks later...
On 5/15/2022 at 6:21 PM, Gil Bang said:

I also like CJ Box a lot.  And that's also now a TV series, although on an obscure channel.

Box' main character is a Wyoming game warden named Joe Pickett. 

Both are "modern" westerns. 

I started reading the Joe Pickett series based on this thread. I've finished the first three books so far, and they are great. I also watched the first few episodes of the TV series. Let's just say I am really glad I started the books first. I don't think I would have wanted to if I saw the series first. It's pretty bad. 

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44 minutes ago, Seasick Sailor said:

I started reading the Joe Pickett series based on this thread. I've finished the first three books so far, and they are great. I also watched the first few episodes of the TV series. Let's just say I am really glad I started the books first. I don't think I would have wanted to if I saw the series first. It's pretty bad. 

I haven't seen the show, and I really don't have any desire to do so.  

For some reason, I was really excited about Bosch getting developed for TV, but this one doesn't do it for me. 

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  • 7 months later...
On 7/12/2022 at 12:08 PM, Seasick Sailor said:

I read Streets of Laredo a while back. It was fine, but paled in comparison to Lonesome Dove. I have Dead Man's Walk in my TBR pile. I hope it's better. 

Streets of Laredo starts off pretty sluggish. I have about 3 hours left on the audiobook, and I’m enjoying it. It is pretty bleak. Feels like an over correction from McMurty. He set out to write the anti-Western in Lonesome Dove. It of course was adapted into the beloved mini-series and became a classic Western. So McMurty just kills off all of our favorite characters within the first few chapters. 
 

It kind of reminds me of The Sopranos. David Chase hates the mafia, but he created the greatest mob show ever. 

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13 hours ago, billfromlaketravis said:

Streets of Laredo starts off pretty sluggish. I have about 3 hours left on the audiobook, and I’m enjoying it. It is pretty bleak. Feels like an over correction from McMurty. He set out to write the anti-Western in Lonesome Dove. It of course was adapted into the beloved mini-series and became a classic Western. So McMurty just kills off all of our favorite characters within the first few chapters. 
 

It kind of reminds me of The Sopranos. David Chase hates the mafia, but he created the greatest mob show ever. 

Bleak is a perfect way to describe it, and I agree it feels like an overcorrection.

I just finished the Dead man's Walk audiobook. I enjoyed it much more than SoL. I am looking forward to listening to Comanche Moon next. 

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40 minutes ago, Seasick Sailor said:

Bleak is a perfect way to describe it, and I agree it feels like an overcorrection.

I just finished the Dead man's Walk audiobook. I enjoyed it much more than SoL. I am looking forward to listening to Comanche Moon next. 

Dead Man’s Walk is next on the list.

Streets of Laredo thoughts: 

- Of course LM has to kill off Clara in the epilogue. Because why not? Already killed everybody off.

- Call’s super power appears to be persistence. You get a hint of it in Lonesome Dove, but he’s just an old grumpy bastard too stubborn to die. 

- I like Pea Eye and Lorena’s story line. Good, healthy family. Maybe the kids will lead peaceful lives without extreme violence and trauma.

- I liked all of the supporting cast of characters. Famous Shoes, Billy, Goodnight, Brookshire, Roy Bean, and Ben Lilly.

- I guess Maria is Lorena on the other side of the border that never got out of her shitty hometown. She didn’t get a happy ending.
 

- I was ok with villains Mox-Mox and Joey Garza, but they’re pretty 1 dimensional. Just evil for the sake of being evil. I guess we get some back story on why Joey broke bad. Mox-Mox I guess was created out of LM’s imagination. Oh by the way there’s a guy more evil than Blue Duck in his gang, but LM didn’t bother to mention him in Lonesome Dove. 
 

- John Wesley Hardin has much more developed and has interesting dialogue. I guess Texas’ most notorious outlaw is easier to write.

- I liked the epilogue especially after such a bleak beginning, middle, and most of the end. Pea and Lorie make it home to raise their kids. Call finds meaning again through Teresa and sharpening blades. 
 

Question for the thread, what’s the best book on Loving and Goodnight?

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On 6/20/2022 at 4:55 PM, Kennythetiger said:

Last picture might be from “The Shadow Riders”. 

Yep, I stand corrected, Sam had darker hair and a beard in Sacketts.  Selleck kinda looked the same.  Speaking of the cast, Sacketts had a great fucking cast.

A great fucking cast.   Glenn Ford as Tom Sunday.  Ben Johnson as Cap Rountree.  Jack Elam as Ira Bigelow.  Slim Pickens as Jack Bigelow.  Mercedes McCambridge as Ma Sackett.  Ruth Roman.  Buck Taylor.

MV5BNWZlNjcxOTItYTVkZi00ODM2LWIwYmEtZmNi

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On 11/19/2018 at 2:38 PM, Ten Bears said:

I have found several good western books by reading the credits of movies where they list what the movie was based on.  Three of the better ones were:

Little Big Man

Dances with Wolves

The Outlaw Josie Wales

 

Elmer Kelton's The Time it Never Rained was set in 1950's West Texas, but I consider it a western.  Damn good book.  He wrote a bunch of decent pulp Westerns too.

 

 

 

 

Really enjoyed time it never rained. Almost finished reading The Way of the Coyote by Kelton. It’s been great. Really covers a fair amount of the Comanches in Texas and does so accurately, I feel. Great and underrated writer.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Yeah, Dead Man’s Walk isn’t an improvement over Streets of Laredo. 
 

Congrats LM you did it again, killed off every character except for Gus and Call. That said, Buffalo Hump is an interesting villain. 
 

The ending is the most troublesome. LM painted himself into a corner. Gus and Call are stuck in a leper colony outside of El Paso. They can’t take a rocket ship back to Austin, so they do the next best thing. Haha, Lady Carey. A leper ex pat with plenty of money to outfit an expedition. I’d like to read the editor’s notes on her character. 

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Any Fort Davis/Alpine/Marfa surly guys out there? I’m confused on why Larry McMurty writes the Far West Texas like it’s Antarctica. Based on median temperature charts, it looks like Marfa has pretty mild winters.

I understand much of Comanche Moon, Streets of Laredo, and Dead Man’s Walk takes place in the Baldy’s so elevation is involved, but surely Gus and Call would have had better weather. Months of constant ice storms doesn’t sound right for Texas. The weather would have broke at some point and they’d catch a warm day. 

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I just finished Comanche Moon. I’d rank it a distant second after Lonesome Dove with Streets of Laredo and Dead Man’s Walk bringing up the rear. 
 

Captain Skull in Comanche Moon is probably the third most interesting character of the series. I’d read the hell of a Skull Civil War book. His wife is pretty interesting too. 
 

I think McMurty did a really good job of writing about Comanche and Kickapoo culture? I know he was an avid reader, so I assume he read dozens if not hundreds of books on the subject before he wrote Buffalo Hump, Kicking Wolf, and Fancy Shoes. 

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  • 2 months later...

Not really a western i suppose, but I guess there's not better thread to discuss McMurtry. I just finished Terms of Endearment and thought it was excellent. Aurora Greenway is one of McMurtry's best characters. Some of the Rosie/Royce stuff dragged a bit, but, overall, I thought the book was very well done. Has anyone read the other books in his Houston series?

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