Good westerns ?

[Connavar]

I love westerns movies ala Clint Eastwood and the spagetti westerns.


I was wondering if there are good books like that?

Not only cool ones ala spagetti westerns but also generally good stories.


I know of this famous guy called louis l'amour, if you have read him which of his westerns would you recommend?

 

[Winter Lord]

Well, since this is a fantasy & science fiction forum, who about some Westerns in that vein?

Mad Amos Malone, an athology by Alan Dean Foster.
Devil's Tower & Devil's Engine, by Mark Sumner
There was one written by S.P. Somtow about werewolves, but I can remember the title.

 

[littlemissattitude]

I know of this famous guy called louis l'amour, if you have read him which of his westerns would you recommend?

The only Louis L'Amour I've ever read wasn't even really a western and was instead science fiction (or maybe fantasy, depending on how you define the two) called The Haunted Mesa that features a portal between the modern world and a world ruled by the Anasazi. I read it a long time ago, but I recall liking it well enough. I might even have to revisit that, come to think of it.

 

[suupaabaka]

The Dark Tower series by Stephen King and the Jon Shannow books by David Gemmell immediately spring to mind.

Though judging by your name, Connavar, you may be at least acquainted with the latter =P

 

[that old guy]

Lonesome Dove, by Larry McMurtry was quite good. The sequel was forgettable but tolerable, as is usually the case with these things.

All the Pretty Horses, by Cormac McCarthy won all kinds of critical acclaim but I thought it about the most tedious thing I'd ever tried to read. I did not finish it, though a friend characterized it as "two guys get on their horses, ride to Mexico, nothing happens, then they go home." No clue if that's a fair assessment or not, since I never personally finished it. Though with a review like that I'm unlikely to pick it up again any time soon.

I know I've read a couple of L'Amour's books, but the only one that sticks out in my mind is Last of the Breed, which was a Tom Clancy-ish techno thriller about a downed Native American US Air Force jet pilot in the old USSR. Very good if you like that kind of thing, and I do if I'm in the right mood, though doubtless dated with all the Cold War references.

I know Loren Estelman is highly thought of in the Western genre, though I mostly know him from his detective novels.

 

[Connavar]

No need to mention Shannow, he is already my fav Gemmell character and Gemmell is my hero and my top ten fantasy is written by him


Dark Tower i have read and didnt like.


I dont really want fantasy westerns but real westerns.

I read enough of fantasy already.

There must be good westerns out there.

 

[Urien]

Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy. A very grown up western. Nasty, allegorical and mind expanding.

 

[Connavar]

Thanks andrew sounds like exactly what im looking for.

 

[Snowdog]

I've read most of Louis L'amour's novels and he is the most famous and most widely-read western author. They are mostly slim volumes, easy to read and mostly good yarns. Some of them are pretty formulaic, but they're not all like that. A good number of Western films were made from his books.

A good place to start would be some of these, and if you like them you'll probably end up reading them all

The Quick And The Dead (not the film with Gene Hackman)
The Man From Broken Hills
The Daybreakers
How The West Was Won

Some meatier westerns include the already mentioned Lonesome Dove, an epic, Mountain Man by Vardis Fisher, The Killer Angels by Michael Saara and The Big Sky by A. B. Guthrie, Jr.

Another good author is Ralph Compton, especially his Trail series.

There are a large number of 'pulp' western authors as well (I'm not denigrating them, that's just the style), notably the Edge books by George G. Gilman if you can still get them, but they're a bit un-PC. In fact they're so un-PC they've become collector's items, but you can probably still pick them up on eBay.

 

[Wiggum]

I enjoyed both Blood Meridian and All the Pretty Horses by McCarthy, personally preferring Horses. A warning about McCarthy though, his style is...unusual, and may not be to your liking.

I'm also a huge Larry McMurtry fan, and to me Lonesome Dove is an incredible, incredible book. The sequel, Streets of Laredo, like that old guy said isn't on the same level, but I loved it. The other two in the series are pretty much filler for fanboys like myself.

Bucking the Tiger by Bruce Olds is a great piece of historical fiction about Doc Holiday. His writing style alone is worth the price of admission.

I've read several of L'Amour's books, but never been grabbed by them.

 

[Connavar]

I've read most of Louis L'amour's novels and he is the most famous and most widely-read western author. They are mostly slim volumes, easy to read and mostly good yarns. Some of them are pretty formulaic, but they're not all like that. A good number of Western films were made from his books.

A good place to start would be some of these, and if you like them you'll probably end up reading them all

The Quick And The Dead (not the film with Gene Hackman)
The Man From Broken Hills
The Daybreakers
How The West Was Won

Some meatier westerns include the already mentioned Lonesome Dove, an epic, Mountain Man by Vardis Fisher, The Killer Angels by Michael Saara and The Big Sky by A. B. Guthrie, Jr.

Another good author is Ralph Compton, especially his Trail series.

There are a large number of 'pulp' western authors as well (I'm not denigrating them, that's just the style), notably the Edge books by George G. Gilman if you can still get them, but they're a bit un-PC. In fact they're so un-PC they've become collector's items, but you can probably still pick them up on eBay.

Thanks.

It doesnt matter how short the stories are. I like any kind of western huge series or shorter yarns.

What does pulp western mean actually? More adult version?

 

[j d worthington]

No, pulp certainly doesn't mean that. It's from the pulp conventions... people like Max Brand, who was a very popular western writer for a long time. Robert E. Howard also wrote some rather good western stories... like his fantasy, they are often quite grim and bleak in tone -- but he also did some "tall-tales" type westerns, which are often quite good for a chuckle.

Here's Wiki's list of Western fiction writers:

List of Western fiction authors - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

as well as their article on the western genre:

Western fiction - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I would also suggest Thomas Berger's Little Big Man, which is quite a good novel.

 

[Winter Lord]

I would also suggest Thomas Berger's Little Big Man, which is quite a good novel.

I think he wrote a sequel a few years ago.

 

[Connavar]

Blood Meridian and Lonesome Dove are the ones i decided to try first cause i can get them from the library.

Also they sound the most interesting.

 

[Taltos]

You could try Mike Resnick books Mike Resnick as most of his books take place in a universe which resembles wild west - with crooks and bounty-hunters and so on. Good books to start with, would be Widowmaker serie

 

[j d worthington]

I think he wrote a sequel a few years ago.

Yes, Return of Little Big Man. Unfortunately, I never read that one (should look it up at some point), so I don't know anything more about it....

 

[Snowdog]

What does pulp western mean actually? More adult version?

Pulps are books or magazines that are cheap and usually churned out in great quantities. For instance, I think the Edge series went to 50 or 60 books.

I think it originally referred to the quality of the paper, but I'm not suggesting the Edge or similar series are on inferior paper, more that they are short, written quickly and that there are a lot of them.

 

[AuntiePam]

I love westerns.

The Flight of Michael McBride by Midori Snyder is a western with supernatural elements, and has one very scary villain.

Some others I've enjoyed:

Shane by Jack Schaefer
Two by Ron Hansen -- Desperadoes and The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (it's gonna be a movie)
Tie my Bones to Her Back by E. F. Jones
The Missing by ? Eidson (was also a movie, with Tommy Lee Jones)
Heart of the Country by Greg Matthews (with a malevolent, mysogynistic, hunchbacked dward -- you'll love it)
Anything for Billy by Larry McMurtry
And if you want to get "literary" Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather

 

[Connavar]

Two by Ron Hansen, is it about Jesse James? Is he the main characters? or is it about the ones who killed him?


I saw the missing, prolly better done that story as a book.


Anyone ever read Jonah Hex comic? I love westerns with supernatural elements.

Was just about thinking to ask for those kind of westerns.

 

[Lith]

I'd also suggest Shane by Jack Schaefer. It's pretty much the quintessential Western story, and it's not too long, and IMO Schaefer has a better command of language than most I've seen.