Best Reads (And They Aren't All Westerns)
Western writers share the books that most influenced their lives and craft.
By: TW Editors 07/01/2007
A Christmas Carol
Charles Dickens
Much like Hemingway, I could cite several works by Charles Dickens on my list. Great Expectations, David Copperfield and A Tale of Two Cities will always be with me. Yet if a six-gun was pressed to my temple, I’d more than likely pick Dickens’ “little Christmas book”—a potboiler first published in 1843, a full 102 years before I squalled into the world. The simple but enduring story told in A Christmas Carol gives me hope every time I read it.
In Cold Blood
Truman Capote
Capote’s chilling book detailing the brutal 1959 slayings of a Kansas farm family and the consequences that followed had a lasting effect on journalism and the craft of writing. The book also had a lasting effect on me. Often referred to as a “nonfiction novel,” the book totally changed crime reporting and influenced the way I approach any subject I write about.
Lolita
Vladimir Nabokov
First published in Paris in 1955 and eventually in America in 1958, this controversial novel almost immediately attained classic status. It influenced many authors with its innovative style and gave us a word to describe a seductive young girl that will be in our collective vocabulary forever. Deliciously written by a masterful author, this book should be required reading for anyone who contemplates the life of a novelist.
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