Saturday 3 September 2016

Books read in August

Another busy month for me but five books read so that's not bad considering.

41. O Jerusalem - Laurie R. King

42. The Wolf in Winter - John Connolly

43. Follow that Bird! - Bill Oddie

44. Jacquot and the Waterman - Martin O'Brien

45. True Grit - Charles Portis

True Grit tells the story of Mattie Ross, who is just fourteen years of age when a coward going by the name of Tom Chaney shoots her father down in Fort Smith, Arkansas, and robs him of his life, his horse, and $150 in cash. Mattie leaves home to avenge her father's blood. With the one-eyed Rooster Cogburn, the meanest available U.S. Marshal, by her side, Mattie pursues the homicide into Indian Territory.

I rather enjoyed this western adventure, told in the first person by fourteen year old, Mattie Ross. I haven't seen the newer movie version of True Grit but remember with a deal of fondness the late 60s version starring John Wayne, Kim Darby and Glen Campbell (though I'd forgotten Glen Campbell was in it even though he was one of my favourite singers back then). Anyway... I felt it portrayed very well how it was to live in 1870/80s Arkansas, I was fascinated by it all to be honest but then I have always enjoyed westerns on the screen even if I haven't read all that many. I gather there are considerable differences between the film and the book but as I haven't seen the film in a while I wasn't affected by that. I loved Mattie and her struggle to avenge her father's death even though she was only a fourteen year old girl. I would have liked more detail about The Territory... the area outside Arkansas inhabited by Indians and outlaws... which would have meant a longer book and that would have been fine. I felt that I'd no sooner got into the book than it was finished. It made me want to read more in the same vein so I'll have to look on Goodreads to see what there is in the way of realistic westerns. Not a bad read at all.

Another good batch of books... all were decent reads and I even managed a non-fiction. Favourite read this month? Well they were all good but this one was just a tad above the others in interest and enjoyment:


September is now upon us and it's starting to feel very autumnal in the mornings and evenings. Delightful. And the R.I.P. challenge has started so I need to get my post up sharpish. Happy reading!

~~~oOo~~~

5 comments:

DesLily said...

well you know I've read the Mary Russell book! I am surprised that you read a western story! Like you that was 75% of television when I was young and loved them.. and I did read westerns when I was young.(I can remember reading some Zane Gray books) I think I'd find a western that I had seen with John Wayne hard to read because he was so good in the parts. anyway you are far above my reading this year!! I only read 3 books last month. I do have to make a RIP post though!!

Kailana said...

I am looking forward to Autumn and Autumn reads! Look forward to your RIP post. :)

BooksPlease said...

I read True Grit a few years ago, I quite liked it. I watched the John Wayne film many years ago but remember very little about it, other than an old and overweight Wayne wearing an eye patch helping a girl to trace her father’s murderer. I loved what I called Cowboy books as a child and watching TV series like Wagon Train etc - makes me nostalgic thinking about them now.

I was wondering if you were going to do the RIP challenge this year - I've been looking through my TBRs and wondering whether to do it or not myself. I do like to read spontaneously though. :)

Kay said...

I'm going to do the RIP challenge. I mean, why not? It's what I read anyway. My post should be up later in the week and I also hope to be around more for commenting, etc. So, I'm waving to you! LOL

Cath said...

Pat: I don't mind a western story to be honest but good ones are hard to find. I enjoyed True Grit and yeah... I imagined John Wayne as Rooster Cogburn even though I think he was a bit old for the role. lol

Kelly: I'm looking forward to autumn reading too. :-)

Margaret: I quite liked True Grit as well, but I didn't love it, it was lacking somehow. Yes, reading the book I think John Wayne was rather too old for the part of Rooster Cogburn. I was addicted to westerns as a child, Yes, Wagon Train and Laramie, Cheyenne, Lawman and so on.

I wasn't sure about doing RIP this year but like you I checked my books and decided it would be a good way to get a few books off the tbr mountain.

Kay: Pleased to hear you're joining us with RIP... exactly... it's what I read too so it's a no brainer really. Look forward to your post and to seeing you around again. *Waves back* :-)
https://read-warbler.blogspot.com/2016/09/books-read-in-august.html?showComment=1472905407702
read-warbler.blogspot.com
CC-MAIN-2024-10
124352
application/http; msgtype=response
sha1:7PP7I6E3GK7DSJVVYZJYOJ4LJZJGY5QW
<urn:uuid:2cf610a3-683c-4a59-ae2d-0e5269add0d6>
2024-03-05T09:56:26Z
142.251.167.132
text/html
sha1:MZPFVPBP7SKNPC6BPF3H7IZG6VRZKTIY
<urn:uuid:59c022b6-34e2-4ef1-9615-06d1bb093114>
https://read-warbler.blogspot.com/2016/09/books-read-in-august.html?showComment=1472905407702
response
<urn:uuid:19da917a-9ec4-4f8b-a30b-fe9e950de0e6>
isPartOf: CC-MAIN-2024-10
publisher: Common Crawl
description: Wide crawl of the web for February/March 2024
operator: Common Crawl Admin (info@commoncrawl.org)
hostname: ip-10-67-67-229
software: Apache Nutch 1.19 (modified, https://github.com/commoncrawl/nutch/)
robots: checked via crawler-commons 1.5-SNAPSHOT (https://github.com/crawler-commons/crawler-commons)
format: WARC File Format 1.1
conformsTo: https://iipc.github.io/warc-specifications/specifications/warc-format/warc-1.1/