At lunch yesterday I browsed through Larry McMurtry's book
Folly and Glory
which is his fourth book in the Berrybender series. (The Berrybenders being a family, and the stories are set in the earlier days of western exploration, as opposed to the End o' the West Lonesome Dove novels.)
Anybody read Larry McMurtry? I only read him occasionally though I do find him a fine storyteller and I trust his research about the old west. The notable thing though was he makes Joss look like an amateur when it comes to offing loveable characters. He kills off toddlers left and right.
I've read some of the Lonesome Dove novels -- but none of the Barrybender books.
Having a poor understanding of the word "epic," I read
Lonesome Dove
in high school and found it irritatingly meandering and pointless. It wasn't that the characters weren't likable and interesting, it was that the story didn't seem to have much point beyond "They set out, they traveled for a long time, they got there, and then some of them went home."
I wanted more of a classic dramatic action, I guess. No, I've never read James Michener, either, although I got about 400 years into
Sarum,
the Edward Rutherfurd novel about primordial Britain, before crapping out with the annoyingness of Late Neandertal interclan marriage.
I loved Sarum, absurd multigenerational incestuousness nonwithstanding.
His other England book Forest, lost me about 40 pages in, right after the deer sex scene told from the pov of a stag.
right after the deer sex scene told from the pov of a stag.
You prefer to look at things from a more doe-like angle?
I prefer my reading material to be sans animal-pov-sex-scenes entirely.
I prefer my reading material to be sans animal-pov-sex-scenes entirely.
So, no Anita Blake books, then?
There's bestiality in those too? I thought it was just vampires.
There's bestiality in those too? I thought it was just vampires.
Oh, no -- Anita has other lovers of the were- persuasion.
You see, in the crazy melty world known as the Anita Blake-verse, there are werewolves. And wereleopards. And wererats. No, seriously. Wererats. (That was the point where I lost all ability to take the books seriously.) And other were-types that I can no longer remember.
And Anita has fucked the leader of all of the groups, I'm pretty sure.
