(If there’s a western you love that has nothing to do with what I mention below, or is even something I say I don’t want, please recommend it anyway! Ultimately the point is to try new things so I’m open to anything!)
My monthly reading challenge is reading a western. Admittedly, they’ve never appealed to me.
I’d appreciate suggestions that would be classified as a western, but maybe dip into the genres/vibes I like.
Horror/thriller
Absurdism/Surrealism/Weird Lit
Magical realism/paranormal
I don’t really like reading “romance books” as a genre (I enjoy a romantic subplot, but it’s definitely not necessary). Which seem to be the main options available. (Besides like gun slinging cowboys and the gold rush).
I do like taboo romance (within reason). So if I end up with a romance I’d rather it be something a little weird.
I’m on the waitlist for Chasing the Wild (Elliott Rose) and Wild Card (Elsie Silver) just in case I don’t find anything else. But I’m not super stoked about either lol.
So please! Any suggestions welcome!
by Harakiri_238
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The Sisters Brothers! Omg it’s so good.
Lonesome Dove
Stephen King’s *The Dark Tower* comes to mind.
Blood Meridian seems perfect.
Outlaw Planet by MR Carey. It’s loosely related to his Pandominion duology, but reads well as a standalone book.
I described it as “Not just your typical hard SciFi multiverse Civil War Western lone gunslinger xenophobic experiment Buddhist allegory.”
The blurb describes it as:
>This is the story of Bess – or Dog-Bitch Bess as she came to be known. It’s the story of the gun she carried, whose name was Wakeful Slim. It’s the story of the dead man who carried that gun before her and left a piece of himself inside it. And it’s the tale of how she turned from teacher, to renegade, and ultimately to hero.
This is also the tale of the last violent engagements in an inter-dimensional war – one of the most brutal the multiverse had ever seen.
This is how Bess learned the truth about her world. Came to it the hard way, through pain and loss and the reckless spilling of blood, and carried it with her like a brand on her soul. And once she knew it – knew for sure how badly she’d been used – she had no option but to do something about it.
I don’t usually enjoy westerns either, but this one is the exception.
True Grit by Charles Portis
Lonesome Dove is my absolute favorite western.
China Men by Maxine Hong Kingston and How Much of These Hills is Gold by C. Pam Zhang are basically mythology about the Chinese cultural presence in the American West
*The Country Under Heaven* by Frederic S. Durbin is a western with Lovecraftian elements.
Days Without End by Sebastian Barry
“The method of laying out a corpse in Missouri sure took the proverbial cake. Like decking out our poor lost troopers for marriage rather than death. All their uniforms brushed down with lamp-oil into a state never seen when they were alive. Their faces clean shaved, as if the embalmer sure didn’t like no whiskers showing. No one that knew him could have recognised Trooper Watchorn because those famous Dundrearies was gone. Anyway Death likes to make a stranger of your face. True enough their boxes weren’t but cheap wood but that was not the point. You lift one of those boxes and the body makes a big sag in it. Wood cut so thin at the mill it was more a wafer than a plank. But dead boys don’t mind things like that. The point was, we were glad to see them so well turned out, considering.
“I am talking now about the finale of my first engagement in the business of war. 1851 it was most likely. Since the bloom was gone off me, I had volunteered aged seventeen in Missouri. If you had all your limbs they took you. If you were a one-eyed boy they might take you too even so. The only pay worse than the worst pay in America was army pay. And they fed you queer stuff till your shit just stank. But you were glad to get work because if you didn’t work for the few dollars in America you hungered, I had learned that lesson. Well, I was sick of hungering.”