RTT Quarterly - July-September 2022 - The Old West

19th Century North America: The Old West



http://www.librarything.com/tag/American+West,+historical+fiction

http://www.librarything.com/tag/19th+century,+American+West

Update the wiki here: https://wiki.librarything.com/index.php/Reading_Through_Time_Quarterly_Theme_Rea...

Maybe I'll finally get to News of the World which has been on my Kindle since 2018. Doc is on my virtual TBR so I'd like to get to that as well. We'll see where this summer takes me.

>2 beebeereads: Two of my favorite books. I hope you enjoy them.

Spoiled for choice on this one. Probably will read 2 quickies to get them off my shelf: Second Chance (mining town in Idaho) and I have a 32 page old west romance.

07/21 - I've started Warlock (Legends West #1; by Oakley Hall)-- a Pulitzer Prize finalist in 1958. Apparently it's a take on Tombstone where people & place names have been changed out, and real & fictional events combined. The effect is the creation of an American Western mythos that feels real even as we (subconsciously or not), recognize the hyper-stereotypes for what they are: Our best and basest selves playing out as characters/caricatures. This is something very opposite the Zane Grey novels that many people think of when they think about The Old West.

07/23 - I’m temporarily setting aside ‘Warlock’ in favor of The Last Stand: Custer, Sitting Bull, and the Battle of Little Bighorn (by Nathaniel Philbrick; narrated by George Guidall). We’ll see if I’m still interested in continuing with ‘Warlock’ after I finish ‘The Last Stand’. There’s nothing wrong with Oakley Hall’s novel; but I’ve feel like I’ve “seen this movie” many times before!

I have finished Bugles in the afternoon in which we spend much time on station with the Seventh Cavalry before they ride out to meet the Sioux.

I've DNF-ed Warlock (Legends West #1; by Oakley Hall) - Most likely truly novel in 1957 in an era where Zane Grey's works were canon in regard to the Old West, this has been eclipsed by more modern retellings of Tombstone, Arizona; but I did finish The Last Stand: Custer, Sitting Bull, and the Battle of the Little Bighorn (by Nathaniel Philbrick); narrated by George Guidall) , a non-fiction title covering General George Armstrong Custer and the Hunkpapa Lakota leader, Sitting Bull against the backdrop of the Battle of Little Bighorn. With an even-handed approach to both leaders, the author takes a new look at the iconic battle waged in Montana. Philbrick attempts to mitigate both the hagiography and the propaganda surrounding Custer & Sitting Bull respectively and; to reconstruct the motivations and movements of the battle about which there is a lot still unknown. Listening to this in audio does a disservice to the work: The lack of having corresponding maps at hand is keenly felt and; the narrator barely survives criticism in his voicing of Native American people.

I'm not doing so great with this section of the RTT challenge-- just the one book so far. I'm trying to see if I can find something set in the Pacific Northwest that appeals, maybe something about the Oregon Trail.

I wasn’t really keen to read a Western per se— so I decided to read a little bit about Native American cultures. Taking my cue from The Last Stand: Custer, Sitting Bull and the Battle of Little Big Horn (by Nathaniel Philbrick), I picked the Lakota Sioux. As a point of reference, they are the indigenous people of the Standing Rock reservation that in turn became the center of attention in regard to a proposed pipeline a couple years ago.
Anyway, despite having read & listened to Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee (by Dee Brown; narrated by Grover Gardner) a few years ago, I opted for a more specific primer, the children’s book, Who Was Sitting Bull? (by Stephanie Spinner). The “Who Was…” books aren’t as detailed or lavishly illustrated as the DK books, so I was a little disappointed but I did learn a couple of things about the Sioux— so mission accomplished!

Greetings! I've been on LT since 2008, but I just learned of and joined this group. I've read two books this calendar year the more or less fit this category. One fiction and one non-fiction.

The non-fiction is American Republics: A Continental History of the United States, 1783-1850 by Alan Taylor. This is a very detailed and well-written history of the period. One of Taylor's key theses is the debunking of the concept of Manifest Destiny as Americans normally understand it. According to Taylor (and he is quite persuasive) it was always an open question as to whether the settlers outside the established boundaries of the country were going to throw in their lots with the U.S. or either of the colonial powers on-hand, the French and the English. Basically, it was whoever could protect them from the Natives and/or could help them get their crops and goods to market, and for many years that wasn't necessarily the U.S.

The fiction is Boy in Blue, a Civil War novel about the war in the west (mostly Tennessee) written in the 1940s by a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist from San Francisco named Royce Brier.

I picked up News of the World (by Paulette Jiles; narrated by Grover Gardner) and listened to it again (Yes, this is my third re-read and the second time in audio)! It's the story of Captain Kydd, a Civil War/Confederate veteran who goes from town to town in Texas reading the news to paying audiences. While in route to one of his engagements, he is charged with returning a girl who had been kidnapped by the Kiowa to her surviving family. Just a great story :-)

I then picked up Simon the Fiddler (also written by Paulette Jiles & narrated by Grover Gardner). Simon is featured very briefly in NOTW and I thought this would be set in the same time period; but it's a little earlier (1865-66 whereas NOTW takes place in 1870) and falls a bit closer to the Civil War time period (The book starts out in the closing days of the Civil War and; The immediacy and uncertainty of the times portrayed precede any sense of Reconstruction-- especially in Texas where things were "complicated"). A slower paced tale about Simon as he makes his way from the war into his life thereafter in Texas. Still a good story and things are really starting to happen in the last third of the book.

>10 Tanya-dogearedcopy: I really enjoyed those two books as well. The movie, News of the World, with Tom Hanks, is pretty good too. My favorite book by Paulette Jiles is The Color of Lightning, which also takes place in the Old West.

>11 marell:
thanks for the tip! Just checked out the e-book from the library. I, too, really liked News of the World, both the book and the movie.

>11 marell: I wasn't going to include Simon the Fiddler in The Old West category; but after thinking about it some more, I'm going to put it in the wiki for this quarter: Most of the book takes place after the Battle of Palmito Ranch (the last battle of the Civil War) and; the the post-war social & legal landscape proved to be a formative crucible from which the Old West mores were developed. For those who might be interested, Paulette Jiles details much of the Texan environment at this time (more so than with NOTW) which slowed the pace down a bit; but it builds a stronger platform from which the climax of the story is launched.

I just picked up The Color of Lightning from the library :-)

October - December thread is up:
https://www.librarything.com/topic/344052

I don’t read many books about the American West. But I picked up Woman of Light, the story of a young woman who finds visions in tea leaves. Through her eyes, I found out about the trials and tribulations of a family of mixed Latinx and Indigenous people trying to make their way in the American West. It was a story I was not familiar with.

I read Daughter of a Daughter of a Queen by Sarah Bird. Based on a true story, it's about a black woman who disguises herself as a man and joins the Buffalo Soldiers who are sent out west to fight the Indians after the Civil War. It was an excellent read.

I couldn't sleep last night, so I picked up & read Black Elk's Vision: A Lakota Story (by S. D. Nelson)-- a children's book and biography of Oglala Lakota Medicine Man, Black Elk. He was a cousin of Sitting Bull's and was present at the Battle of the Washita and at The Battle of Little Big Horn... This NF title explores Black Elk's guiding vision in the context of the disappearing way of life for the Lakota in the 19th-century. The illustrations are beautiful and the story included contemporary photos. My only quibble was that I read this on an old mini-iPad and it took a few seconds for each page to load. I'm thinking of getting a hard copy of the book plus a couple other of Nelson's biographies (i.e. Sitting Bull, Red Cloud)-- and switching over to a more up-to-date iPad! It's time!

For this category I have read The Compact History of the Indian Wars by John Tebbel.

I appreciated this book because you get the picture from the first encounter between European and Native American to the last battle, tragic though it is. It is divided in two parts, the Conquest of the East, a conflict which took three centuries, and thus, over half the book, and The Conquest of the West, which took thirty years. I chose it for its theme of westward expansion, so I think it fits here. It is not dry reading in any way, and it is well-written, bringing the times and characters to life.