Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurty

One of the prompts for the 2018 Read Harder challenge was to read a western. If I'm going to read a western, I'm going to read The Best Western Ever. The 1986 Pulitzer Prize winning Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurty repeatedly came up in lists of great westerns and there's nothing saying I can't appreciate a good genre piece like everyone else.

And, you know what? It was good. The writing was so well done. It's just the kind of writing I like - sparse, to the point, and with just enough character to show that the author has a point of view. I because really attached to some of the characters and found myself quite sad at some points when things didn't go the way I wanted them to for those characters.

It's essentially the story of a cattle drive from Texas to Montana, but it takes a quarter of the book to even get started on the cattle drive and there are many tangential trips from the cattle drive, but I frequently joked to Dr. BB as I was reading this that the title should have been Cattle Drive. Also, I can't possibly be the only one in the world who would start humming under my breath to a classic Garth Brooks song whenever my eyes would fall on the cover of this book.

She was a girl on a wagon train
Headed west across the plains
The train got lost in a summer storm
They couldn't move west and they couldn't go home

Anyway. I did like this book.  A lot.

But I didn't love it. All the women were either nags or whores. There were pages and pages in which literally nothing happened. I like a bit of plot and while this was a strange sort of quest book, the quest wasn't quite engaging enough for me. The ending was sort of cliffhanger-y and made it clear I should read the next book in the series, but I don't want to read another 900-page epic.  And, honestly, this is my own deal, but westerns sort of make me feel claustrophobic. All those description of the clear blue sky and endless fields make me a bit sick in my stomach and I just want to be back in my little cave. 

So, sure. I get why McMurty won a Pulitzer and I admire what he did here. The western genre was well served. I'm glad I read this novel and wouldn't seriously object if I had to read more McMurty for some reason or another.  But it's definitely not going on my top ten books ever list.