Recommendations for Westerns?

[GAROVORKIN]

The Oxbow Incident    by Walter Van Tilburg Clark

[Ski the Swift]

On 26/10/2017 at 1:18 AM, Maithanet said:

I am interested in reading a few Westerns, a genre I have almost no experience with.  Aside from a couple of hybrid Westerns like No Country for Old Men and Red Country, I don't know that I've ever read a real western. 

So what do people recommend?  What are the go-to Westerns these days?  I'm looking for something with ya know the usual good stuff like good characters, exciting action and a decent plot...I'm sure that will help narrow things down

Have you ever heard of Warlock by Oakley Hall? It is classic Western set in the fictional town of Warlock and most of the story is based straight from American History with Billy the Kid and Wyatt Earp from Tombstone. 

A very riveting story with larger than life characters. It also delves deeply in to right and wrong and what compelled both men and women in those times to do what they felt they had to do to keep their honour.

Highly recommended.

Also -cough- first post back on the forum in what I think is eight years!

[Isis]

On 10/25/2017 at 6:38 PM, Maithanet said:

Yeah, I probably should read that since I liked McCarthy's other stuff.  But someone on the forum said it was even more depressing than The Road, which makes me very wary. 

True. But definitely worth your time. Hope you enjoyed The Sisters Brothers though. That's at the opposite end up the spectrum. Probably you should suffer Blood Meridian first. 

[Maithanet]

On 12/31/2017 at 10:05 AM, Isis said:

True. But definitely worth your time. Hope you enjoyed The Sisters Brothers though. That's at the opposite end up the spectrum.

I did enjoy Sisters Brothers quite a bit.  I thought the plot was very surprisingly unconventional.  I did not at all expect it would end with

Spoiler

No gunfight or confrontation of any kind.  Two of the characters get poisoned, and one of the brothers loses his hand, but that's about it.  In a lot of books it would have felt very anticlimactic, but frankly I didn't feel like there was any sort of showdown building, so it worked. 

Quote

 

Probably you should suffer Blood Meridian first. 

 

Maybe at some point. 

On 10/28/2017 at 0:33 PM, Lyanna19 said:

Agree, agree 1000 times,  reading thru this post, I kept waiting for the Louis Lamour recommendation, I grew up on his westerns, my dad and my brothers too, one of my most favorite ( although not a western) is The last of the Breed,

I just read Mojave Crossing by L'amour.  It was a competent pulp western, which is about what I expected.  I'm not sure I'm gonna seek out more of them though, it didn't really surprise me any, and the characters felt very by-the-numbers.