True Grit | How the west (end) was won

Clearly we all just read far far too much. Of the (magnificent) seven who came, just one had failed to read the book. To the surprise of everyone, that one was not Thomas 'Poor Excuses' Quinn but Cathy 'Jugglin' Them Chillen' Norton.

What happened was this. We took them early in the morning. Their horses were lame. Their jokes were lamer. We had the upper hand. We had a magician. He completely fooled them with a trick involving a rattle snake and a spinning coin. Or it might have been a rattling coin and a spinning snake. Nobody was quite sure.

Personally, I thought True Grit was an excellent novel. I don't think beans were mentioned more than once. And well worth re reading, Arabella, should you manage to find a spare hour or two between running the Best Damned Dental Surgery In The West.

I really liked the narrator. She was full of purpose and you were never in any doubt what kind of person she was. I loved how she would fill in the narrative with tangents. I really thought it did what a good novel should always do. It gave a fresh perspective on a world we thought we knew. In this case: the lawless west. Plus, I never even imagined Indians might have owned slaves. The thought never occurred. I feel I need to research this more.

Mark, the book I mentioned was Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry. I have never read it but I had a friend once who did. He loved it. The fact we are no longer friends is neither here nor there. I never slept with his sister or stole his horse. Click on the coloured bit to find the wiki entry. Lonesome Dove was written in 1985 and was turned into a TV miniseries which featured none other than Robert Duvall, but only because John Wayne refused to be in the movie. Both the TV series and the book are available via Amazon and other book retailers. Be warned, it is 960 pages long. But at just £6.79 for the paperback I'd say that represents excellent value. Yeehaw.