Best Books on Texas?

[El Diablo 4232]

Finished Rhino Ranch and started Texasville. Much better reader. The tenor of both Rhino and this one are a good bit different from Last Picture Show, imo. They're good books but a bit more silliness.

[ztejas 43411]

Hank the Cowdog.

Can't miss - they're all great.

[Guest Lobo]

It's a long read, but we got time in Covid-19..."Big Wonderful Thing:  A History of Texas" by Stephen Harrigan.

It will end up rivaling the works of Michener, his mentor, when all is said and done.  

[El Diablo 4232]

On 8/16/2020 at 1:07 PM, Lobo said:

It's a long read, but we got time in Covid-19..."Big Wonderful Thing:  A History of Texas" by Stephen Harrigan.

It will end up rivaling the works of Michener, his mentor, when all is said and done.  

Sounds like something South Austin's mom might have penned. 

[Guest Lobo]

No, no...you're mistaken.  She only writes under her Pen Name..."Nom de PlumpCoc."  

[El Diablo 4232]

Just finished up "Texasville". Didn't really like it much, as a continuation of Last Picture Show it just fell flat for me. I'm going to continue on here shortly with the next in the series, "Duane's Depressed" just because it's the last one now being that I read Rhino Ranch out of order. Hope it gets better and if it falls somewhere 'tween RR and Tville I'll be okay with that. 

[Chad Fuck 17658]

It's a long read, but we got time in Covid-19..."Big Wonderful Thing:  A History of Texas" by Stephen Harrigan.
It will end up rivaling the works of Michener, his mentor, when all is said and done.  

I just got this on Audible. Looking forward to it. Good to hear a positive review.

[High Plains Drifter 11024]

On 8/19/2020 at 7:49 PM, El Diablo said:

Just finished up "Texasville". Didn't really like it much, as a continuation of Last Picture Show it just fell flat for me. I'm going to continue on here shortly with the next in the series, "Duane's Depressed" just because it's the last one now being that I read Rhino Ranch out of order. Hope it gets better and if it falls somewhere 'tween RR and Tville I'll be okay with that. 

 

yeah, I really didn't like Texasville either.

[El Diablo 4232]

I've been hitting the McMurtry hard this summer. "Duane's Depressed" was pretty good and then I found out that there was another book in the series, "When The Light Goes", so I read that too. I liked it, it was a short read but it filled in some gaps that I could relate to. That mostly being the age range covered is where I'm at currently. I do think that I've tired a bit of his writing style though and I think part of that is the books in this series that came much later on after Last Picture Show were all written after McMurtry had spent a lot of years writing screenplays and they seem to me to have a screenplay feel to them. I say that but it didn't stop me from reading more of his work! I went on to read "All My Friends Are Going To Be Strangers" and enjoyed it a good bit, plenty of interesting characters, the locations appealed to me but then at the end it took a very movie-like twist and left me puzzled. It seemed like he needed an ending and just came up with something that would look good on screen. I started "The Last Kind Words Saloon", a tale of Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday, here in the last week but I'm not sure when I'll finish it soon. It's not really holding my interest, the dialogue again seems as though it was written as a movie script. Hard to explain but it doesn't flow like a typical novel, at least to me. 

Someone suggested Stephen Harrigan upthread so I looked into his stuff last week. While I didn't find the history of Texas book in the library I did find a collection of essays, basically articles that he had once written for magazines, and it's pretty good. He does the reading himself which is nice I think. The stories are not all Texas-centric but most do have some relevance. The first essay is about the Comanche Indians and provides a summary of the last days of the Comanche as a free people with some discussion on Cynthia and Quanah Parker, their relocation to a reservation and how the Comanche now are coping with the modern world. 

[El Diablo 4232]

Finished the essays and started a novel by Harrigan, "The Gates Of The Alamo". Very Michener-like. Fictional characters plopped down into an historical event with a good number of lesser characters for flavor. Turns out that reading Harrigan's essays first was a good idea as some of the facts from those essays surface again to provide detail in this novel. Having immersed myself in McMurtry for the better part of this summer this leap further back into Texas' history seems to be sinking in a little more just as far as paying attention to and appreciating the generally harsh living conditions and society in general as well as a better understanding of the politics that were leading up to our eventual independence. I'm just about halfway thru now, with Travis occupying the Alamo and Bowie and some volunteers occupying San Antonio and Santa Ana and his men suffering thru a long arduous march to the outskirts of the town. The Alamo is being fortified and the Mexican army fearing a possible trap and/or ambush has decided that rather than rush an attack on the Texians they will wait until the full army can be assembled before starting a proper assault. 

[El Diablo 4232]

Finally finished the Harrigan book on the Alamo. Not complaining really, the story was good but goddamit if one of the primary (though fictional) characters was a completely unredeemed loser. The Alamo battle narrative had some twists that are debatable depending on which historian you ask but the author addressed those in an addendum and the ending was never in doubt so some alternative activity was not really a distraction. 

I enjoyed it enough that I've started another Harrigan book, "Remember Ben Clayton". Story really hasn't got a grip on me yet and is a bit hard to decipher where it's headed. Also the reader is nowhere near as good as with the Alamo which was read by Harrigan himself. Oh well, I'll struggle on a bit further and hopefully there will be a payoff. 

[NotActuallyALonghorn 4974]

On 8/14/2020 at 4:47 PM, ztejas said:

Hank the Cowdog.

Can't miss - they're all great.

Matthew McConaughey is voicing Hank the Cowdog in a new podcast that just premiered.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.kvue.com/amp/article/news/entertainment-news/matthew-mcconaughey-hank-the-cowdog-podcast/269-7e681896-be66-483c-ad0f-782103985d9f

[El Diablo 4232]

This Harrigan novel I'm on now is sucking ass, bad. The Alamo book was alright I think because he had a historical event to work around but even then the characters and created story were pretty clunky at times. This one is just weird. Seems like there's some common themes in his work with some odd attraction to art and Catholicism and neither is really exciting as subject matter to me. The essays/magazine articles were good but as a novelist he's not rceally a great story teller. JMHO. 

[NeverMarryAStripper 21872]

I you like books about Texas, you should check out this place:

https://copanobaypress-gallery.com/

They reprint a lot of old Texas books. 

[NIUHuskies 504]

 

Worthy of all it's praise. Took 3 weeks to read it but damn...

[CHIEF 5075]

On 10/21/2020 at 11:12 AM, NeverMarryAStripper said:

I you like books about Texas, you should check out this place:

https://copanobaypress-gallery.com/

They reprint a lot of old Texas books. 

I just purchased this one today: https://copanobaypress-gallery.com/collections/republic-of-texas/products/texas-with-particular-reference-to-german-immigration-the-flora-fauna-land-and-inhabitants Gonna give it a read, then give it to CHIEF Jr.

CHIEF

[thrillhammer 683]

On 9/16/2020 at 3:08 PM, El Diablo said:

This Harrigan novel I'm on now is sucking ass, bad. The Alamo book was alright I think because he had a historical event to work around but even then the characters and created story were pretty clunky at times. This one is just weird. Seems like there's some common themes in his work with some odd attraction to art and Catholicism and neither is really exciting as subject matter to me. The essays/magazine articles were good but as a novelist he's not rceally a great story teller. JMHO. 

i finished gates of the alamo and thought it was pretty poor, but it got me in the mode so i picked up michener's texas.  i gotta say it is not very good.  i'm halfway done so will finish it, but it got so much hype when it came out and buzz through the years i was expecting more.  

[thrillhammer 683]

On 10/22/2020 at 1:42 AM, NIUHuskies said:

 

Worthy of all it's praise. Took 3 weeks to read it but damn...

are you going to read the other three?

[NIUHuskies 504]

1 hour ago, thrillhammer said:

are you going to read the other three?

 

[El Diablo 4232]

3 hours ago, thrillhammer said:

i finished gates of the alamo and thought it was pretty poor, but it got me in the mode so i picked up michener's texas.  i gotta say it is not very good.  i'm halfway done so will finish it, but it got so much hype when it came out and buzz through the years i was expecting more.  

I read a lot of McMurtry this summer and "Texasville" was very successful when it came out but it didn't do much for me reading it at this late date. And after reading a lot of his stuff it seems that much of his work has a screenplay feel to it and unfinished screenplay at that. A couple of stories had complete wtf endings, as though he couldn't figure out where or how to end the story and just cobbled together something so he could write "the end". "The Last Kind Words Saloon" was that way. Just weird to me. I think some of these writers can just throw anything out there and folks will gobble it up based on previous works. It sells well, makes top seller lists and then of course that encourages more to buy. I've read a lot of Michener but never Texas but I can see his work and his readers falling into that trap. I've never read a book by him that I didn't thoroughly enjoy but most all of them were earlier works.

[billfromlaketravis 11447]

I just finished Empire of the Summer Moon by S.C. Gwynne. It was terrific if not anticlimactic. 

Goodbye to a River by John Graves is on the list. 

[BigOrange1 6432]

During the COVID quarantine last spring, I subscribed to Texas Monthly.  Last fall, in back to back issues, there was a long form story about a teen's disappearance in Canadian back in (I think) 2018.  (There was also a podcast devoted to it).  The man who wrote the story was Skip Hollandsworth.  I was so impressed with the story that I started following him on Twitter and discovered that he had also authored several books.  That led me to buy this one which I am currently reading:

 

It is really good!  I am about 200 pages in and can't stop turning the pages.  It is about a serial killer in Austin in 1885-1886.  It actually predates Jack the Ripper and this killer had many more victims.  It's a great story about Austin as a city and community back in those days as well.  I can not recommend it highly enough.

[BigOrange1 6432]

also read this one last summer.  it was good, but not in the same class as the book listed above:

[CHIEF 5075]

On 1/27/2021 at 3:03 PM, CHIEF said:

I just purchased this one today: https://copanobaypress-gallery.com/collections/republic-of-texas/products/texas-with-particular-reference-to-german-immigration-the-flora-fauna-land-and-inhabitants Gonna give it a read, then give it to CHIEF Jr.

CHIEF

Got to read this by candlelight this past week. Great book. The author talked about coming to Austin, he said he rode out to a round topped mountain, about 800 feet in elevation, once on top, he could see an expanse of the Colorado for many miles. I realized he was talking about Cat Mountain, now covered with multi-million dollar homes.

CHIEF

[Dry Elbows 142]

On 10/22/2020 at 1:42 AM, NIUHuskies said:

 

Worthy of all it's praise. Took 3 weeks to read it but damn...

All of them are good. Master of the Senate is my favorite. 

[Patricio Swayze 17058]

I need some suggestions for non fiction works about the borderlands.  Both literature and photography books.  Any help is appreciated.

[tantric superman 4667]

Never read McMurtry, but just finished Walter Benjamin at the DQ, which to me seems like a good place to start.  He certainly recommends lots of books in the essay/autobiography.  One in particular about Charles Goodnight, which McMurtry claims is the best biography of a western figure.  Am getting it from the library and will report.

[tantric superman 4667]

On 2/28/2021 at 8:31 AM, Dry Elbows said:

All of them are good. Master of the Senate is my favorite. 

It has the most perfect introduction I may have ever read.  Just gorgeous, emotional and compelling.

[Hate 20106]

It's a long read, but we got time in Covid-19..."Big Wonderful Thing:  A History of Texas" by Stephen Harrigan.
It will end up rivaling the works of Michener, his mentor, when all is said and done.  

Does this touch much on Austin’s Colony? I’ve recently found out that I’m part of the Old 300 and I’m trying to find as much information as I can on the line of my family. I bought a book that I thought would really go into details since it is about the family, but there wasn’t as much depth to that era as I had hoped.

[Dry Elbows 142]

1 hour ago, tantric superman said:

Never read McMurtry, but just finished Walter Benjamin at the DQ, which to me seems like a good place to start.  He certainly recommends lots of books in the essay/autobiography.  One in particular about Charles Goodnight, which McMurtry claims is the best biography of a western figure.  Am getting it from the library and will report.

Great book. The Bryan Museum has an exhibit on Goodnight I need to check out.

[Dry Elbows 142]

36 minutes ago, Hate said:

Does this touch much on Austin’s Colony? I’ve recently found out that I’m part of the Old 300 and I’m trying to find as much information as I can on the line of my family. I bought a book that I thought would really go into details since it is about the family, but there wasn’t as much depth to that era as I had hoped.

Not really. I read Big Wonderful Thing and was underwhelmed. Perhaps my expectations were too high. 

[billfromlaketravis 11447]

Kings of Texas by Don Graham. The first 150 pages are pretty slow. It starts to get good when the book finally focuses on King Ranch. 

[billfromlaketravis 11447]

On 9/1/2021 at 7:38 PM, billfromlaketravis said:

Kings of Texas by Don Graham. The first 150 pages are pretty slow. It starts to get good when the book finally focuses on King Ranch. 

Yeah it didn't finish much better. I'd skip this one. Graham finds a boring way to tell a very interesting story.

[NotActuallyALonghorn 4974]

Only about Texas in passing, but the book Wild Sports in the Far West by Friedrich Gerstäcker is an interesting read for anybody who is interested in what life was like on the frontier. Basically, he travelled from Germany to the US in 1837 and spent the next six years hunting and working odd jobs accross the frontier. Much of the time was in Arkansas, but he travelled through Texas and Louisiana up through Saint Louis all the way up to Cincinnati if I recall correctly. He sent his journals back to his mother in Germany who published them without his knowledge. When he returned home he was surprised to find himself a famous author. The book is basically a compilation of his journals. There is lots of good and interesting stuff in there about the life on the frontier, such as building a platform out of saplings and covering it with mud in order to build a fire on top. He would then sit underneath it at night and use the light of the fire to shoot deer that came up to the salt lick it was overlooking. Also, crawling through caves in Arkansas to kill bears that were sleeping in them. It's a really interesting read if you like stuff like that, and while the book is in the public domain, you can get the kindle version for just $0.99.

[South Austin 52443]

On 2/18/2021 at 8:20 PM, BigOrange1 said:

During the COVID quarantine last spring, I subscribed to Texas Monthly.  Last fall, in back to back issues, there was a long form story about a teen's disappearance in Canadian back in (I think) 2018.  (There was also a podcast devoted to it).  The man who wrote the story was Skip Hollandsworth.  I was so impressed with the story that I started following him on Twitter and discovered that he had also authored several books.  That led me to buy this one which I am currently reading:

 

It is really good!  I am about 200 pages in and can't stop turning the pages.  It is about a serial killer in Austin in 1885-1886.  It actually predates Jack the Ripper and this killer had many more victims.  It's a great story about Austin as a city and community back in those days as well.  I can not recommend it highly enough.

Skip’s a great writer, as are a lot of folks who’ve written for Texas Monthly over the past couple of decades. His article “Still Life” on paralyzed high school football player John McClamrock is one of the most touching pieces of journalism I’ve ever read.

https://features.texasmonthly.com/editorial/still-life/

And his piece “The Lost Boys” on the abduction/murders in The Heights during the 1970s is still haunting.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.texasmonthly.com/news-politics/the-lost-boys/amp/

Michael Hall is excellent on true crime and criminal justice. He gave a talk on capital punishment at my church several years ago. Really great guy.

I think the magazine overall is going downhill some. But if they wanted to make a few bucks, they’d assemble a bunch of their best articles into one collection and sell it on Amazon. I’d buy it.

[billfromlaketravis 11447]

I finished Goodbye to a River by John Graves. Great book written in a fascinating style/prose. Could someone recommend another Graves book? 
 

I’m about 100 pages into The Midnight Assassin. Terrific snapshot of a time and a place. I’m learning a great deal about Austin in the late 19th century. 

[NIUHuskies 504]

On 9/15/2021 at 12:38 PM, billfromlaketravis said:

I finished Goodbye to a River by John Graves. Great book written in a fascinating style/prose. Could someone recommend another Graves book? 
 

I’m about 100 pages into The Midnight Assassin. Terrific snapshot of a time and a place. I’m learning a great deal about Austin in the late 19th century. 

The Hard Scrabble

[NeverMarryAStripper 21872]

If you're interested in Texas books, you might want to check out this rare Texas book auction (it ends tonight though).

https://airauctioneer.com/cbp

Edited November 4, 2021 by NeverMarryAStripper

[baboso 6054]

On 9/15/2021 at 8:19 AM, South Austin said:

Skip’s a great writer, as are a lot of folks who’ve written for Texas Monthly over the past couple of decades. His article “Still Life” on paralyzed high school football player John McClamrock is one of the most touching pieces of journalism I’ve ever read.

https://features.texasmonthly.com/editorial/still-life/

And his piece “The Lost Boys” on the abduction/murders in The Heights during the 1970s is still haunting.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.texasmonthly.com/news-politics/the-lost-boys/amp/

Michael Hall is excellent on true crime and criminal justice. He gave a talk on capital punishment at my church several years ago. Really great guy.

I think the magazine overall is going downhill some. But if they wanted to make a few bucks, they’d assemble a bunch of their best articles into one collection and sell it on Amazon. I’d buy it.

I'll add Christian Wallace to the list of good Texas Monthly writers.

https://www.texasmonthly.com/articles/learning-to-roughneck/

 

[dogbreath 434]

On 9/15/2021 at 12:38 PM, billfromlaketravis said:

I finished Goodbye to a River by John Graves. Great book written in a fascinating style/prose. Could someone . 

Viva Texas Rivers is a new book coming out that features Graves and others on the topic. https://texashighways.com/culture/viva-texas-rivers-celebrates-texas-storied-waterways/

[StassneyHorn 6573]

I always liked Isaac’s Storm by Erik Larson

[El Diablo 4232]

Empire of the Summer Moon on audio book earlier this month. Fascinating stuff to me in part because my paternal grandfather was born somewhere around Evant in 1866 and the later events in the 1870's would have been a very real part of his life. He died some 20 years before I was born but being only a single generation removed I felt a very real connection and an appreciation for my own dad's upbringing by a man who had lived during such times. 

[Dry Elbows 142]

On 12/27/2021 at 7:56 AM, El Diablo said:

Empire of the Summer Moon on audio book earlier this month. Fascinating stuff to me in part because my paternal grandfather was born somewhere around Evant in 1866 and the later events in the 1870's would have been a very real part of his life. He died some 20 years before I was born but being only a single generation removed I felt a very real connection and an appreciation for my own dad's upbringing by a man who had lived during such times. 

Not a bad book, but Comanches by T.R. Fehrenbach is better.

[GreenspointTexas 9598]

Being Texan was great

[Seasick Sailor 3747]

It's been mentioned in this thread several times, but I just finished the audio version of Empire of the Summer Moon, and it is great. 

[futureman 22441]

On 5/26/2021 at 6:34 PM, tantric superman said:

Never read McMurtry, but just finished Walter Benjamin at the DQ, which to me seems like a good place to start.  He certainly recommends lots of books in the essay/autobiography.  One in particular about Charles Goodnight, which McMurtry claims is the best biography of a western figure.  Am getting it from the library and will report.

so what’s the report?

[MalibuSheriff 1090]

I’ll throw in two cents for Goodnight book.

I’m re-reading the book now as I have a trip planned to camp up in the northeast New Mexico/southeast Colorado mesa country in coming weeks on my way to retrieve the kid from camp.

Fantastic book.  Possibly my favorite historical book on this area of the country.  While a great deal of the book and Goodnight’s history took place in Texas, large sections of this book detail his pioneering of cattle drives up through New Mexican and Colorado, all the way to Wyoming.

After reading this book, you see that Larry McMurtry ‘borrowed’ a great deal from this book for the foundation of Lonesome Dove.

Highly recommended for anyone interested in the historical Southwest.

Photo I took about twenty years ago of Charles Goodnight’s grave out on the high plains:

[MillerEP 30447]

Just started The Four Winds, and it takes place in the Panhandle during the 20s and dustbowl area. Still a bit early on to give an accurate review but so far pretty good.

Edited March 26 by MillerEP

[Coach pop a bitch 5459]