Louis L'Amour

What you must understand is that as a child/youngster/teenager I was horse crazy. I read every horse book in my grade school, the local public library, both of my jr. high school libraries and my high school library. And by every book, I mean EVERY book, both fiction and non-fiction. It didn't matter that I owned a horse, what mattered was that I was obsessed with horses. I was quite thrilled when my jr. high burned down, not just because I got out of school two weeks early. I was thrilled because I'd get a whole new library when I got back. What I didn't know then was that books cost tons of money and the library would be 1/4th the size of the previous one. *SIGH* In jr. high, I had hit a dead end as far as horse books were concerned. I had to branch out.

Louis L'Amour was part of the branching out. His books may not have had horses as the main characters, and they weren't in the card catalog under the subject horses, but horses WERE present. I read aka devoured all that I could get my hands on. Over the years I purchased or was given most of them and I still have them. I was 13/14 and I loved the heroics, the horses, the style.

The majority of them are quite predictable and I haven't read them in a long while. I started re-reading L'Amour about six months ago. What I didn't realize when I first read them was how accurate he was in describing landscape, people, and history. I mean the books felt correct and authentic, but I had never seen a cholla so I just didn't bother with trying to put that concretely into the described landscape. Now I know that every place is accurate, every bush, every plant, every little thing.

Over the past couple of years, I have driven through every state, and through every environment in his western novels. I have studied the plants and seen the sunrises. Now his novels are still quite predictable but his descriptions of the landscapes and locations are amazing adding a depth to the books that I had previously ignored. Additionally, I found a website that includes many of the maps from the stories. see: http://www.louislamour.com/Maps/map_title_all.htm. Not every book is represented but many are.

Another thing I really like is that his slim novels can be read in a couple of hours. It's like a really great brownie, familiar yet still delicious. L'Amour's lengthier works are less predictable and take longer to read. My favorite of these is “Last of the Breed”, a book about a Native American pilot captured by Russians in Siberia during the cold war.

I’m not rushing to re-read all of his books; I have about 125 of them. But you’re definitely going to see me type “Finished ____ by Louis L’Amour” in the status line of Facebook and Twitter more frequently.

P.S. In Jr. High during my branching out I also discovered “The Lord of the Rings”. Thank heavens for a really great librarian.