Good Books

I'll probably get in trouble for this, but who cares. I've tried to read a number of female writers and am unable to finish them. Don't know why but I've gotten so I reject female authors completely.
Doesn't Connelly write the Harry Botsch series.
 
Kelton
The day the cowboys quit
Cormac McCarthy
All the pretty horses
Kelton hung out at The Cactus Book Store on Concho in old town
Darn made me think about Eggemeyers on Concho
 
I ran into Elmer a few months before he died. We used to make a point to visit during the San Angelo stock show. He knew my dad from way back. We have signed first editions of all his books.
My favorite is "The Time it Never Rained". Dad always said Elmer wrote it with him in mind.
 
smokeyjoe53":39ijv370 said:
I ran into Elmer a few months before he died. We used to make a point to visit during the San Angelo stock show. He knew my dad from way back. We have signed first editions of all his books.
My favorite is "The Time it Never Rained". Dad always said Elmer wrote it with him in mind.
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That was an excellent book. I thought he modeled it on someone from Stanton?
 
He probably did. The character was so much like a lot of people who ranched during the drought of the '50s. I wish we could still run angora goats. Coyotes have put a stop to that.
 
smokeyjoe53":1rkgj6jt said:
I ran into Elmer a few months before he died. We used to make a point to visit during the San Angelo stock show. He knew my dad from way back. We have signed first editions of all his books.
My favorite is "The Time it Never Rained". Dad always said Elmer wrote it with him in mind.
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I went to college with his grandson. Shane was a good guy. And a big ole boy.
 
Helen McInnes first books were written during WWII and I have not found a copy of those books. Her last book was published in the early 70's. She did not have Super heros in the style of Ian Fleming. Usually her main characters were non-professional men who were caught up in situation where the professionals had to use them. Sometimes her main character did not survive the book.
 
All this talk about good books and I haven't seen this one mentioned....
Phil Roberton's "Happy, Happy, Happy"- It really is a great book if you are a Duck Dynasty fan :)
 
The WEB Griffin books have been great companions over the years. I've read the Brotherhood of War and Corps series multiple times each. This last series, Men at War I think, is substantially written by his son and are lame, in my opinion.
For WW2 afficionados, Rick Atkinson and Stephen Ambrose are great for non-fiction.
Favorite books of all time:
The Godfather (also a great movie)
The Bourne Identity (a pretty good movie)
All The Pretty Horses (a terrible movie)
Lonesome Dove (a great miniseries)
Band of Brothers (a great miniseries)
Winds of War/War and Remembrance (a so-so miniseries)
Omaha Beach (no movie, but The Longest Day and Saving Private Ryan are superb for D-Day movies)
Semi-Tough (a stupid movie)
The Franchise (no movie, but written by the author of North Dallas Forty)
Pride and Prejudice (I know, shut up! At least 2 great movie versions)
Where Eagles Dare (a great movie)
 
Elmore Leonard wrote some good summer reading books. Many of his books have been made into movies and the books are better than every movie. Some of the books I have enjoyed are Get Shorty, The Hot Kid, Cuba Libre, Maximum Bob, Rum Punch, and Be Cool. He did a bunch of westerns too that I have not read yet. Most of the books are federal marshal/PI/sympathetic criminal versus bad guys.
 
Cripes. I got two books here.

And I haven't even started coloring one of them yet.

But Brad, I did spend an evening in the bar at the Ramada Inn in Del Rio, drinking and celebrating Rick Schroeder's 18th birthday while they were in town filming Lonesome Dove ... think that was 1988.
 
I am currently reading the first Game of Thrones book

this is what I have read in the past 15 months

All-time favorites and re-read this again this year
The Sun Also Rises (Hemingway)
The Razor's Edge (Somerset Maugham)

I have been on a mystery/spy tear and was reading a bunch of books these guys put down.
http://snitchbutlers.tumblr.com

Alan Furst - The Polish Officer (WWII)
Don Winslow - The Kings of Cool and Savages (current Cali)
John LeCarre - Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (WWII England)
Charles MCarry - The Tears of Autumn (JFK conspiracy novel)
George Pelecanos - The Cut (current Baltimore/DC)
Karin Fossum - Inspector Sejer series
John Burdett - Sonchai Jitpleecheep series, all take place in Thailand)
Neal Stephenson - Reamde: A Novel, trying to read Cryptonomicon
John D McDonald - The Deep Blue Goodbye
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle - The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
Haruki Murakami - 1Q84
Umberto Eco - The Prague Cemetery
Ismet Prcic - Shards

I have also read both Grisham books that have come out in the last two years, The Great Gatsby, The Hunger Games series and The Lightning Thief ( I actually went to high school with Rick Riordon)

Nate Silver - The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail But Some Don't

Those are the ones I would recommend from the past year or so...
 
During and after college visiting my parent's in area's with no tv I dug into my Dad's entertainment for that era. If stuck out of cell range with no satellite/internet available you still can't beat Zane Grey or Louis Lamour which led me to the Immortal Elmer Kelton for Texas based historically accurate fiction.
 
Alistair MacLean had several books made into movies besides WHERE EAGLES DARE. ICE STATION ZEBRA, PUPPET ON A CHAIN, THE GUNS OF NAVARONE, and WHEN EIGHT BELLS TOLL. His early books were really good and fairly accurate for when they were written. He may have went off the deep end in his later books. His main characters were very much larger than life and his plots were more and more unbelieveable. The last book that I bought I didn't finish. That bad!
 
I'm working on writing several books about my life. So far, I've started:
SixMan Coach: How some really fast kids who could block and tackle kept me from looking stupid.
Marriage: 20 wonderful years, 24 total (and counting!)
Combless: how to lose your hair at 23 and still get chicks
Minority in America: Life as a once-married heterosexual white male Christian
That's what I have so far, what are you guys writing?
 
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