And What Are You Reading?

I've been an avid reader my entire life. I guess my love of literature is one of the things that led to me getting a couple of degrees in English. I can't remember a time when I wasn't reading a book.

Our little library over at the clubhouse is quite good considering it only serves our community. I still use the public library, but when possible, I just grab a couple of books from our RCW library. Unfortunately, because of the pandemic, that library is now closed along with the clubhouse. Luckily, I managed to get a couple of books before it closed.

As the pandemic took off, I began Larry McMurtry's Lonesome Dove. Donna and I gave her father a copy of that book when it first came out. He was also an avid reader, and he raved about the book, so I went out and got a copy for myself. Wow, what a book!

I decided to stay with McMurtry, so I turned to my personal library and rushed through Anything For Billy. I followed this up by reading the first 3 books of the Berrybender Narratives. This is a series of 4 books that follow the escapades of an English family as it romps around the American plains in the 1830s. The first 3 books are Sin Killer, The Wandering Hill, and By Sorrow's River. Well, when I bought the series, somehow I didn't get the fourth and final novel, Folly and Glory, so I'll have to wait a while before I can read it.

I was a big fan of McMurtry in his early writings, such as Horseman, Pass By, Leaving Cheyenne, and The Last Picture Show. But as McMurtry progressed, some of his characters and plots became a bit outlandish for my tastes, and this includes the Berrybender Narratives. He developed a habit of rewriting history in his novels, such as the death of Judge Roy Bean in Streets of Laredo, and this has always bothered me. Still, the man writes an interesting story.

In the Berrybender series, he "borrows" various real persons from history, such as Kit Carson, Jim Bridger, and Jean "Pomp" Baptiste Charbonneau and his father Toussaint Charbonneau. By including the Charbonneaus in the story, there was some mention of the Lewis and Clark Expedition. It was, after all, Sacagawea, wife of Toussaint Charbonneau, who is so very important to that expedition.

As a result, I turned to my home library again and pulled out my copy of Undaunted Courage by Stephen Ambrose. This great work covers the entire history of the Lewis and Clark Expedition in great detail. It begins, for example, by providing a short but thorough coverage of Meriwether Lewis' background.

This is the second time I've read this book, and I am more impressed this time by the efforts of the men of the Corps of Discovery as they followed the Missouri River west to its source in the Rocky Mountains, then over the divide to the Pacific Ocean. What they accomplished is almost beyond comprehension. Until you read a book such as this, you can never really know what a great feat of accomplishment their expedition actually was.