Books & Writers News

Western Book Roundup

Dick Cheney’s Forthcoming Literary Debut

By Jenny Shank, 1-21-09

Vice President Dick Cheney will be doing more than hunting and fishing when he moves back to Wyoming from Washington—he recently told Sean Hannity that he is considering writing a book about his time in office.  Cheney said, “My family has been bugging me about [writing a book]. I’ve got 40 years since I came to town to stay 12 months. I’ve got a lot of stories to tell. And a few scores to settle.” (Via LA Times & Galleycat).

Perhaps Cheney’s future tome will join the shortlist of Wyoming classic books.  Perhaps not.  Tom Nissley recently shared his opinions of the best Wyoming books for the blog Omnivoracious, for its “Books of the States” series.  Nissley writes:

“Jack Schaefer, author of Shane and over a dozen more Westerns, was an Oberlin grad and an Eastern newspaperman who fell in love with the Old West but only moved out to New Mexico later in life (and, as far as I can tell, hadn’t even set foot in Wyoming when he wrote Shane). Wyoming, as a literary state, seems to exist mostly as an idea in the head of writers from the East: the best-known classic Wyoming book, The Virginian, was written by a friend of Theodore Roosevelt who prepped at St. Paul’s [edited per O’Connor’s comment below] and had two Harvard degrees, while the best-known modern Wyoming book (or at least story), “Brokeback Mountain,” is by a woman who lived in Vermont for decades and moved out to Wyoming a few years before her story first appeared.”

In addition to the three works mentioned above, Nissley added Mark Spragg’s Where Rivers Change Direction to his list of essential Wyoming books, and notes that “I was so happy to find a promising book by someone born and bred in the state.”

Terry Gross recently interviewed two Colorado authors on separate Fresh Air episodes for NPR--Denver’s Steve Knopper about his book Appetite for Self-Destruction: The Spectacular Crash of the Record Industry in the Digital Age and Ft. Collins’ Temple Grandin about her new book Animals Make Us Human.  Watch for my reviews of these books soon.

Bruce Barcott (a recent Boulder resident) reviewed Kim Barnes‘ novel A Country Called Home for the New York Times last week, noting that it is “filled with exquisitely etched landscapes. The novel brims with the smell of brambles and berries along an Idaho riverbank, the gritty feel of the dust in an abandoned homesteader’s shack, the sounds of grouse and quail in the fields.”

Greg Griffin of the Denver Post recently reported that the Tattered Cover laid off over ten employees following what bookstore owner Joyce Meskis described as “a disappointing holiday sales season.”

Michael Merschel over at the Texas Pages noted the passing of Creede, Colorado’s Greg Coln, “river guide and author of the self-published Tracks on the River, A River Outfitter’s Perspective of Life on the Rio Grande Headwaters.”

And don’t forget to check out Colorado writer David Wroblewski’s appearance on Oprah on January 26.

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