Read Lonesome Dove recommended to me by my friends Akshay & Shahana over the last few weeks… it’s a long book, adding to the list of long books I’ve read this year.
I enjoyed the book, but I can’t say I got much out of it - it’s a rambling story, a bit simple, that captures your attention and keeps you reading. I read most of it during my trip to LA & Phoenix, which made the book come to life more somehow, being set close to the Mexican border (at least to start!).
I guess the one thing that I ended up thinking about while reading the book was the nature of the American charater… when the rest of the world argues about gun ownership in the US, reading a book like Lonesome Dove gives you an idea of how wild the Wild West really was just 200 years (8 generations?) ago. Guarding individual liberty by force was something that was required, celebrated, and part of the American psyche perhaps - that was something I felt reading the book.
I also ended up pondering about the constrasting characteristics of Gus and Call: I guess I’m more Call than Gus!
Overall a 3.5 on 5 kind of book for me, not one of those rave reviews that Lonesome Dove gets on Goodreads…