Best Western Novels

[mb1]

My wife is a big Louis L'Amour fan. I think we had a copy of every book of his once upon a time. She turned me on to how much practical knowledge you can pick up from his stories, which is something I enjoyed...good survival, fighting, hunting tips, or whatever. Interesting guy in real life too, as most good writers are.

[paladin]

Very interesting books and stories, Doc and others.

Would this be a good "fusion read": If someone were to write a "Science Fiction Western" mix book? Say you take something like WarHammer but mix it with a Louis Lamour flavor, and you get the best of both worlds? Yea or no?

You could have a section of the universe where they have technologies like chainswords and powered armor but where culturally and societally and environmentally everything is like out of the Old West, complete with robot horses side by side with normal horses, and Cold PeaceMaker Plasma Pistols, and Carbon Fiber Armored Dusters and Chaps :) And "Smart nano rope lassoes"

Louis L'Amour's The Haunted Mesa is very close to what you're looking for.

Has anyone read Stephen King's Dark Tower opus? It's central character is supposed to be modeled after Eastwood's gunslinger "Man with no name."

I like King pretty well, but I'm not really interested in magic sorcery stuff...I've heard it's a pretty inaccessible laborious read also.

[Doc Dan]

Louis L'Amour gave me an education. It was from him that I learned about Michael de Montaigne, Plutarch, and many others and then read them all. If he mentioned Scott, I read him. When he mentioned Plutarch, I read him.

[demoncase]

Very interesting books and stories, Doc and others.

Would this be a good "fusion read": If someone were to write a "Science Fiction Western" mix book? Say you take something like WarHammer but mix it with a Louis Lamour flavor, and you get the best of both worlds? Yea or no?

You could have a section of the universe where they have technologies like chainswords and powered armor but where culturally and societally and environmentally everything is like out of the Old West, complete with robot horses side by side with normal horses, and Cold PeaceMaker Plasma Pistols, and Carbon Fiber Armored Dusters and Chaps :) And "Smart nano rope lassoes"

Louis L'Amour's The Haunted Mesa is very close to what you're looking for.

Has anyone read Stephen King's Dark Tower opus? It's central character is supposed to be modeled after Eastwood's gunslinger "Man with no name."

I like King pretty well, but I'm not really interested in magic sorcery stuff...I've heard it's a pretty inaccessible laborious read also.

I can't recommend the Dark Tower saga, I'm afraid......King seems to delight in spending 200 pages meandering about streams of consciousness where 12 pages of concise writing would have lost nothing and moved the plot forward the same amount.

He lacks nothing except brevity.

[chuck_roxas45]

Fair Blows the Wind by L'amour is one of the best by him for me. That doesn't qualify as a western though. If it has to be a western, The Sacketts is among my favorites. I used to read any of LL's books that I could get my hands on, back in college.

James Michener's Texas, although not in the style of LL is probably among the top westerns IMHO.

[Bloke]

I found another one that I really liked called: The Good Old Boys by Elmer Kelton. :)

[Doc Dan]

Elmer Kelton wrote some great Westerns (and other genres). Massacre at Goliad was very good. His series on the Texas Rangers is a good read, too.

[RLR]

Cormac McCarthy "Blood Meridian" is possibly one of the best books period in the modern age. Tough read, demanding, nihilistic but rewarding.

[Sharp24/7]

Very interesting books and stories, Doc and others.

Would this be a good "fusion read": If someone were to write a "Science Fiction Western" mix book? Say you take something like WarHammer but mix it with a Louis Lamour flavor, and you get the best of both worlds? Yea or no?

You could have a section of the universe where they have technologies like chainswords and powered armor but where culturally and societally and environmentally everything is like out of the Old West, complete with robot horses side by side with normal horses, and Cold PeaceMaker Plasma Pistols, and Carbon Fiber Armored Dusters and Chaps :) And "Smart nano rope lassoes"

Louis L'Amour's The Haunted Mesa is very close to what you're looking for.

Has anyone read Stephen King's Dark Tower opus? It's central character is supposed to be modeled after Eastwood's gunslinger "Man with no name."

I like King pretty well, but I'm not really interested in magic sorcery stuff...I've heard it's a pretty inaccessible laborious read also.

Thought I’d give this thread a bump since I’ve been reading Lonesome Dove and loving it. The Dark Tower series is good overall, but you have to like King. There’re entire books in the series that aren’t very good. But the books that *are* good blew me away. Has anyone read Elmore Leonard’s Westerns? Hombre and Valdez is Coming are good, and he wrote the original 3:10 to Yuma. But my favorite is City Primeval: High Noon In Detroit. Ignore the crappy version they did for TV last year. I love Justified, but Raylan Givens isn’t in the novel. It’s a modern Western, but not in a woke sense. Not anti-cop at all. I’m going to have to add Zane Grey to my list.

[zuludelta]

Cormac McCarthy "Blood Meridian" is possibly one of the best books period in the modern age. Tough read, demanding, nihilistic but rewarding.

This. It took me multiple false starts before I could really get into it, but it really gets rolling about a third of the way through. A great novel, not just a great "Western novel."

Also, I don't know if it holds up, but I read Hal Borland's "When the Legends Die" when I was a kid (it was maybe just the 2nd or 3rd full-length novel I'd read to that point), and I remember it making a really huge impression on me.

[Ankerson]

Shane 1953