Odes to the American cowboy, in the form of the Western novel, started taking shape in the early 1900s, a decade after the U.S. Census Bureau declared that the frontier was closed; the books captured a nostalgia and romantic yearning for an era and way of life that was on its way out (and in some ways, never really was). Western novels mixed real-life detail with larger-than-life drama, as all great mythologies do.
Voted by his peers in the Western Writers Association as the greatest Western writer of all time, and recipient of a record 7 Spur Awards, Kelton authored a number of books that could appear on this kind of list. I read a handful, and thoroughly enjoyed each and every one; the best of the bunch, though, in my opinion, is The Time It Never Rained.
READ BOOK PURE COWBOY
A collaborative effort by German journalists Stefan Koldehoff and Tobias Timm, Art and Crime is an expansive follow-up to their acclaimed False Pictures, Real Money (2012) and takes readers on a journey through the opaque world of the most notorious art crimes. This topical book includes a chapter about Donald Trump and the art he owned, as well as proposals for changes in the art market and museums that could benefit everyone.
Alfred Henry Lewis started writing the Wolfville series in 1902. Followed by three other books, it gave readers a taste of the true life of the cowboy mixed with the tallest of tall tales.
Wally McRae is a rancher, an American cowboy, a cowboy poet and philosopher. He runs the 30,000-acre Rocker Six Cattle Co. ranch on Rosebud Creek south of Forsyth Montana. Wally McRae attended grade school and high school at nearby Colstrip, Montana. He graduated from Montana State University in 1958 in zoology and chemistry. His books, Stick Horses and Other Stories of Ranch Life, Cowboy Curmudgeon and Other Poems, and Up North is Down the Crick: Poems.
Bonus from Nikhil: \u201CI read a ton of Rick Riordan books this summer because YA is so much more readable and fun than contemporary fiction about sad people in cities having affairs.\u201D [ed note: Damn\u2026 no need to clock Sally Rooney like that]
This is it: Frank Miller's 1986 magnum opus, the gold standard against which all Batman stories will forever be judged, for better or worse. Miller's tale of an aged Caped Crusader coming out of retirement to fight a new breed of criminal was deliberately set outside DC's continuity, which gave Miller lots of room to play. The result is big and operatic (think Rambo meets Wagner's Ring Cycle). But it's also grim and gritty and helped usher in an era of dark, brooding heroes that remains the default superhero mode. It became such a hit both in and outside comics circles that readers of in-continuity Batman hungered to bring the book's dark vision of future Batman an in-canon reality, voting by phone to kill off Robin in 1988.
Whether we know it or not, the books we read could influence us in more ways than we could imagine. As for Hitler, he found his comfort as a child in reading the travels and adventures of a novelist named Karl May. He became so fascinated and so swept up with his Wild West adventures that it not only affected his schoolwork, but the character Winnetou and Old Shatterhand also shaped how the future dictator viewed the world and his war ideals.
This is the kind of book that you read in one sitting, slam shut, take a deep breath, and dive straight back into. It is also a book that has established Almada as a force to be reckoned with amongst Argentine writers. 2ff7e9595c
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