Yet another busy week but things have started to settle down, got back to reading properly yesterday and have reached the point where we get some interesting reveals. Very excited about where it goes from here.

What about all of you? What have you been reading or listening to lately?

For details on the c/Books bingo challenge that just restarted for the year, you can checkout the initial Book Bingo, and its Recommendation Post. Links are also present in our community sidebar.

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[–] massive_bereavement@fedia.io 5 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Warlock by Oakley Hall. A Western novel about the town of Warlock and it's a very good example of revisionist western: where characters are shades of moral grey instead of classic old west good vs. Bad.

The writing though does a lot of effort to make dialogs appear old-timey (was written in 1958) and characters will often go around to beat some desert bush, making some conversations dreadful.

Regardless, a solid recommendation for anyone with a western itch.

[–] dresden@discuss.online 2 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Haven't really read many westerns, might be something to try.

[–] massive_bereavement@fedia.io 2 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Blood Meridian is also recommended as a revisionist Western, and probably better than Warlock (though that's a bit unfair as the earlier came out later).

All in all, both worth a read, if you have to choose:

Blood Meridian if you are OK with some harsh violence and some "men are animals" narrative.
Warlock if you want to read an honest effort in historic fiction for a town set in a period that is often aggrandized in our own mythology.

If somehow neither of these are interesting to you, there's also Butcher's Crossing, which is contemporary to Warlock, but a completely different novel (while still a big part of the revisionist western).

These three are called the greatest western novels (Iirc).

[–] dresden@discuss.online 2 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Thanks for the list, going to try check out all of them!

Edit: Just saw that Blood Meridian is by Cormac McCarthy, have heard of him a lot but haven't read anything yet, so might be a good place to start.