WESTERN BOOK ROUNDUP
Western Books, Authors Land on Amazon List
The "best of" lists for books are starting to roll out. Amazon.com's top 100 list features many Western authors and books.By David Frey, 11-12-08
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Amazon.com has come out with its Best Books of 2008 list, and, not surprisingly, it features several books from and about the West.
Coming in at No. 5 is Westminster, Colo., author David Wroblewski’s blockbuster The Story of Edward Sawtelle. It’s been a good year for Wroblewski. His tale, a twist on Hamlet set in rural Wisconsin, is the current pick of Oprah’s Book Club, a dream for just about any author, let alone a debut novelist. (Read his NewWest.Net interview here.)
“David Wroblewski’s extraordinary way with language in The Story of Edgar Sawtelle The Story of Edgar Sawtelle immerses readers in a living, breathing world that is both fantastic and utterly believable,” Amazon declared when it picked the book as its Best Book of the Month in June.
Three places down is So Brave, Young and Handsome, a Western tale by Leif Enger, author of the bestselling Peace Like a River. The book is “absorbing as a campfire tale, full of winking outlaws and relentless villains,” Amazon writes.
Here are some other Amazon picks worth eying.
Sitting Bull, by historian Bill Yenne, aims to cut through the legend that has surrounded the Lakota leader.
State by State: A Panoramic Portrait of America, brings together 50 authors to present an updated, but quirky, version of a Depression-era WPA guide to the 50 states. Among the contributors is Montana’s Sarah Vowell and Wyoming’s Alexandra Fuller. Fuller begins:
A cowboy I met – well, now he fixes washing machines and installs stoves and has gut-rot and hemorrhoids from all the bad coffee he drinks staying awake to do it, so I don’t guess he’s much of a cowboy anymore – told me how once he came to see the whole history of Wyoming in the course of a single cattle drive. He told me it was hard to explain exactly how it happened. He said, “It’s like how the smell of branding smoke in your nose brings on the taste of whiskey in your mouth. Do you know about that?”
Final Salute: A Story of Unfinished Lives stems from author Jim Sheeler’s work for the Rocky Mountain News chronicling the grim duty of Maj. Steve Beck to notify families of the death of their loved ones on the battlefield. Says the Washington Post: “Ultimately, Sheeler pays the deceased troops and their families the great tribute of never reducing them to one-dimensional characters. In succinct, vivid prose, complemented by photographs that illuminate the lives of the young men and their families, he beautifully captures their individuality and unique personalities.”
A few Western authors are soaking in the sun this week. Among over 300 authors on hand for the Miami Book Fair International are Rick Bass, whose recent memoir is Why I Came West, and Terry Tempest Williams, with her latest, Finding Beauty in a Broken World. Wroblewski will be there. So, too, will Dave Berry. OK, so maybe Miami considers him one of its own, but Berry spends enough time in Idaho for us to claim him, too.
Closer to home, Denver poet laureate Chris Ransick and Laramie, Wyo., writer Julianne Couch will join for a reading on Tuesday, Nov. 18 at Fort Collins, Colo.’s Bas Bleu Theatre Co. Ransick won the 2003 Colorado Book Award for Never Summer. His book Lost Songs & Last Chances won the 2006 Colorado Authors’ League Award for poetry. Couch, an English prof at the University of Wyoming, penned Jukeboxes & Jackalopes: A Wyoming Bar Journey.
I’m filling in for book editor Jenny Shank while she introduces little Theo to the world (welcome Theo, and congrats, Jenny), so feel free to and send any Western book news my way!
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Comments
Best wishes,
Natalie Acres
Author of western romance titles