Lonesome Dove

Look at the title. Take a look at that cover. Read the synopsis of the plot. Nothing about Lonesome Dove appeals to me. Yet I've read its 858 pages three times. It may be my favorite book.

What is it about this book?

Here, then, are ten reasons I love Lonesome Dove:

1. My second-best-friend Karen and I don't agree on much (“You say tuh-may-tuh, I say tuh-maw-toe”), yet we are both crazy about Lonesome Dove.

2. I personally know three teens who were converted into readers by reading this book. Non-readers into avid readers. That's some book.

3. The movie is as good as the book. That never happens.

4. I'm sorry, but if Gus showed up at my door, I'd have to leave my husband and run off with him. He's a lazy, good-for-nothing, philosophizing scoundrel but I just adore him.

5. It takes place in Texas. (Well, mostly.) Enough said.

6. The characters live their lives right now. They have to. They may not be here tomorrow. There's real danger in the world. Lots of it.

7. Funny. And sad. The secret to a good book is that it's funny. And sad. Like real life, I think.

8. Love the names of the characters. Lippy. Dish. Newt. Boot. Pea Eye.

9. These folks can talk. Here's a bit between our two main characters, Gus and Call, partners in the Hat Creek Cattle Company:

“It's a good thing I ain't scairt to be lazy,” Augustus told him once.
“You may think so. I don't,” Call said.
“Hell, Call, if I worked as hard as you, there'd be no thinking done at all around this outfit. You stay in a lather fifteen hours a day. A man that's always in a lather can't think nothin' out.”
“I'd like to see you think the roof back on that barn,” Call said.

10. I guess the craziest thing is that there are a hundred reasons why I should hate this book. I don't like Westerns, for one. I don't particularly like stories written by men, for another. The women do whatever they have to do to stay alive and a lot of that isn't pretty. At least a hundred reasons I should hate this book, but, nevertheless, I don't. I love it. Crazy.




What in the world made me pick up this western? A western, really?

But it is a book that hooked me after reading the first page. I fell in love with Gus and all the other odd characters in this story, set in Texas back in the days where the West was beginning to close its doors for business. Never read another Larry McMurtry or another western that hit me in the gut like this book.