August TIOLI - Read a Western

This is an offshoot of the main TIOLI challenge: http://www.librarything.com/topic/121262#2852389

I'm reading So Much To be Done: Women Settlers on the Mining and Ranching Frontier edited by Ruth B. Moynihan, Susan Armitage, and Christiane Fischer Dichamp and am finding out so many interesting things. The book, which is a compilation of entries from diaries, letters and manuscripts, is set in the 2nd half of the 19th century. At the beginning eggs in San Francisco were going for $4 a dozen, as was a gallon of milk. A year later eggs were $6 a dozen. Fresh fruits and vegetables were like gold; it looks like the way to make your money during a gold rush was to be a farmer. Carpenters were making $6 to $10 a day, and women with domestic skills made even more.

This is from the diaries of Carrie Williams who wrote beginning in 1859 in Gold Flat, Nevada County, California. Carrie's husband is Wallace:
Monday Wallace had the tooth(ache). Tuesday he suffered very much with it, so much that he went to Chapman and had a hole drilled through the root...Wednesday Wallace's tooth was so painful that (he)n took a sharp knife and pushed it into the gum, and it relieved him very much. Do you think this was an early root canal?

This is from 3 years later, George is a child, but I don't know what age. He's old enough to have been killing chickens for the family for 2 years. George was shot in the head by Conant Bryerly one year ago this month. They were playing duel. Doctor Hunt extracted the bullet. It was a hard struggle for master G to keep from kicking the bucket for 4 or 5 months. He also had that horrid disease diptheria, from the effects of which he has hardly recovered yet. God in his kindness has spared my darlings from the many complaints that have been among the little children this winter & in so many cases have proved fatal...

I am currently immersed in Doc by Mary Doria Russell.

I am currently reading The Goodnight Trail by Ralph Compton - a real "cowboy adventure" about getting the cattle to market through virgin country. Lots of indian fighting, river crossings and gun play. I love westerns and, if time allows, I may be back to add some more to the Wiki.

I'll be reading Doc on Saturday. I've been looking forward to it for months.

#4: I hope you enjoy it as much as I have, Joyce.

I do to. I was pretty disappointed with The Sparrow and Children of God. If it weren't for LT, I wouldn't have read anything else by Mary Doria Russell, but I very much enjoyed Thread of Grace and Dreamers of the Day, so I have high hopes for Doc.

#6: I just finished up Doc about 15 minutes ago. I loved The Sparrow though, so you might not think as highly of Doc as I did. I gave the book 4.5 stars.

I'll know tomorrow, I'd best charge up my Nook for a full day's reading.

Here's another beauty from So Much to Be Done. This is from a Malinda Jenkins who went on to become very rich as a race horse breeder after marrying 3 times, losing her children in divorce and traveling and working in various jobs.

I didn't want no more children. I had my home, my work and everything that a woman raised like me could wish for. Two children was enough.
There wasn't no quarrel with Willie, no words. I was his good wife in every respect--but I wasn't going to have no more babies. And when I said that it meant something because I was posted. (?) The many times I lived with my sister Betty, the doctor (she was a midwife), I was poking my nose in medical books, I knowed more about how things was than the girls around me.
Then we went to visit Mary Lindren, my niece, over Saturday night. I didn't carry no paraphernalia (douching supplies?) because Willie promised to behave hisself. He didn't, and that's where our troubles commenced.
...It was nigh on four years after I had May that my second boy come. I named him William--not after my husband, but after my youngest brother that died. Will was as pretty and fat a little thing as I ever looked at but he didn't fill my heart like May done.
Carrying the child and working so hard, from the moment my health began to fail. Will was born the eleventh day of March,. In the fall and winter before, I spun and wove four blankets. And made up all the clothes, the jeans and flannels for the whole family, knitted all the stockings and everything.
I had been cutting rags for two or three years. I must have been a glutton for punishment. I set at the loom--just four weeks before my time--and wove a rag carpet. With the breastpiece of the loom rubbing against me, and a grease cloth tied around my stomach to keep it from hurting, I finished the carpet and tacked it down. Sunday I cleaned house and got ready. Monday, after dinner, I had an eleven pound baby...

Couldn't believe it but I actually found a western on my TBR shelf at mom's house. So I will be reading The Righteous Revenge of Artemis Bonner by Walter Dean Myers.

Joyce, I think you might enjoy one of my all-time favorites Pioneer Women: Voices from the Kansas Frontier by Joanna Stratton. I have read it many times, still am amazed by the strength and endurance of these women, and think frequently of the stories from the book.

I am adding So Much To Be Done to my list . . . Sounds like it may be similar to Pioneer Women.

I think the two sound similar too, Bren. I'm wishlisting Pioneer Women: Voices from the Kansas Frontier. I heard good things about Women's Diaries of the Westward Journey by Lillian Schlissel, and I was able to get that on my Nook today.

Not that I need another book to read this month, but I'm going to add Here's to the Ladies: Stories of the Frontier Army by Carla Kelly. Carla Kelly is mainly known for her military themed Regency Romances, but she actually has a M.A. in U.S. Military History and has taught history and worked for the NPS out West. The stories in Here’s to the Ladies a very good and two have won awards from the Western Writers of America. If anyone is still looking for a Western to read, I hope you consider joining me!

Alas, Dejah, the only Carla Kelly my library has is The Wedding Journey which is set in the Napoleonic wars. Not quite the west I was after.

I can hardly wait to read Doc but right now the waiting list at my library is too long. I'll try again in a few months.

Doc is so good. It reads like straight biography, she sneaks in lots of history, and a few fictional characters just to move the plot along. I have about 60 pages left, and the more I read the better it gets. I lived for 20 years in Glenwood Springs, CO and there's an old cemetery that takes a bit of a hike to get to. They say Doc Holliday is buried there, but then I think he's supposed to be buried lots of places. I'd love it to be my final resting place, but it would probably have to be through sprinkling of ashes. I don't think they allow burial there anymore. That may sound grim, but death is on almost every page of Doc. He developed TB at age 21, he thought every year was going to be his last.

Joyce, I thought Women's Diaries sounded familiar . . . sure enough - right there on the shelves tucked in with other history books. I'm not sure if I have actually read this book, although it's been on my shelves for years!? Another addition to the TIOLI list . . .

I'm reading Doc this week. Based on your comments, I'm looking forward to it. I'm sure I'll be thinking of Doc Holliday as the character portrayed by Val Kilmer in "Tombstone", one of my favorite western movies. . . ; )

I finished Doc tonight, a great read. It seems he did die in Glenwood Springs; now whether or not he's buried there is a matter of opinion. It won't take you long, Bren, to stop thinking of Doc as Val Kilmer. He was a might sick man for his whole adult life. I've requested both Tombstone and Gunfight at the O.K. Corral from the library because I can't resist.

Tombstone is one of my favorite movies.

"I'm your huckleberry."

Yeah . . . My husband and I quote "Doc/Val" lines all the time. They are really unforgettable. In fact, we may have to watch our copy of "Tombstone" very soon, now that I'm in a Doc frame of mind.

I just finished Cities of the Plain. I want to thank those who recommended I go back to the Border Trilogy and give this last one a try after I got bogged down in The Crossing. And thanks Joyce for making a challenge I could fit it in. The year might be 1952, but it's still a Western when there are ranches and cowboys and dialog like this: "There's no pride in it when I tell you that she set more store by that ring and what it meant that anything else she ever owned. And that includes some pretty damn fine horses."

The fun thing about westerns is that there are so many different types of books that fit the challenge. Angel of Repose and Lonsome Dove are completely different but both westerns. I've just started a fantasy novel The Thirteenth Child set in an alternate west in which there are pioneer settlers along with steam dragons and magic.

My choices for this challenge are really different from each other also. I have finished Thirteenth Child with its alternative western frontier with magic included, and I also finished Breakheart Pass by Alistair MacLean, an action-packed thriller set on an Army troop train in the high mountains of Northern California. These two were completely different from each other, yet both were entertaining westerns. My third book, time permitting, will be These is My Words which is a diary-style novel of a pioneer woman in Arizona.

I finished The Thirteenth Child which I'd kind of been grumping about being too YA, but Patricia C. Wrede manages to get some interesting ideas in such as the three different types of using your power in the world, a big hit on the melting pot ideal of the US (or Columbia as her alternate reality has it) and, in a world full of large terrible monsters the fact that the little ones can do the most damage. On reflection, it was a better book than I had at first thought.
Now I start on an Orange Prize listed western The Personal History of Rachel Dupree by Ann Weisgarber.

I'm still listening to The Journey of Crazy Horse written and narrated by Joseph M. Marshall III a Lakota himself with a great deal of respect for his subject. This book kind of goes along with The Thirteenth Child in that it shows there's more than one way to look at a subject. I know Jared Diamond states that disease did most of the work of decimating Native Americans so whites could take over their country, then white laws took over. Crazy Horse is turning out to be a hero, but alas, nothing could stop the genocide.

The inside book jacket OF The Personal History of Rachel Dupreesays the book is reminiscent of Willa Cather, Laura Ingalls Wilder and The Color Purple. I did think of Wilder and Cather in that this book is so entirely different from theirs, and as for The Color Purple, well, the characters are African American and work hard, that's about it. I found this to be completely unique work, the all American capitalist story told by someone with little interest in economics. Rachel moved from Louisiana to the slaughterhouse area of Chicago as a child, left school at age 16 to earn money for her family as a cook, and experienced constant discrimination from Chicago's black elite because of her dark color and her family's recent immigration. She idolizes Ida B. Wells-Barnett and thinks she would make the woman proud of her by marrying a charismatic, ambitious, hard working, good looking goal-oriented soldier who wanted to make his fortune by settling a ranch in the Badlands of South Dakota. Fourteen years and eight children later the Badlands continue to live up to their name. The family experiences hardship after hardship: draught, freezing winters, hunger, thirst, loneliness and racism. How Rachel deals with these difficulties and what she thinks about them are what make the book so unique. Aside from a rather unbelievable birth scene I found the book nearly perfect and would recommend it to anyone interested in reading about pioneers, hard work or marriage.

I just saw both Wyatt Earp and Tombstone. All in all I preferred the cast in Wyatt Earp. Dennis Quaid was a far more seriously cadaverous Doc Holliday, though Val Kilmer is Val Kilmer and I'd take him in anything. I do think Kurt Russel did a better job as Wyatt, but I like the whole women's cast in Wyatt Earp and also the story better than Tombstone.

I finished my second Willa Cather for the month, Death Comes For the Archbishop and after a reluctant start grew to greatly appreciate it. Cather can write about any land with such love and wonder I can see why the settlers would be willing to suffer so much for their new worlds. However, in contrasting her settlers with Ann Weisgarber I have to think I probably would have been one of those succumbing to the desperation of unending hardship. Next up is either Native Star by M. K. Hobson another fantasy western set in an alternate reality or my first Nevada Barr Borderline set in southern Texas. I've also started listening to O Pioneers! becaise Willa Cather keeps calling.

I finished an audiobook of The Journey of Crazy Horse by Joseph M. Marshall III. He's able to show Crazy Horse as a real man who loved his father, mothers, wives and daughter and loved his people more than himself. From the decimation of the buffalo to the destruction of Native Americans by disease to the complete disregard of the original people of America as people, white settlers do not come off well. I could see why Crazy Horse hated them.

I read Tobias Wolff's autobiography, This Boy's Life chronicling his youth in the Cascade Mountains. It was a fabulous read. I had been afraid it would be too masculine for my taste, but it really can appeal to a broad audience. Westerns are a genre I normally avoid, so this is definitely broadening my reading.

I can't remember who it was who had such fine things to say about Tobias Wolf as a teacher. Maybe it was Ann Patchett. I should read him.