On Reading Plans and How They Can Change in an Instant

I feel myself all of a sudden going off on a new reading tangent. The trip out West we just completed saw me coming home with five new books that I picked up in a couple of the bookstores I visited in Wyoming and South Dakota. Not too surprisingly, the books that caught my eye all have a western twist to them, and I even spent the afternoon in the library today picking out a few other similar books. 

Only two of the books I bought are novels, but they fit well with the nonfiction titles I picked up on the trip and at the library:

I've read a couple of the Leaphorn and Chee novels, but I've not read one written by Anne Hillerman since she took over the series. I'm hoping that this series, especially if I go back and pretty much start over at the beginning, will take up some of the slack I feel while I'm waiting for the next Longmire novel from Craig Johnson to be published. The settings are similar enough to make that happen, and I'm hoping that Anne's writing comes close to measuring up to Tony Hillerman's.

I'm only vaguely familiar with C.J. Box's work, but I've recognized the name for a long time, which only makes it even stranger that I've never read one of the man's novels. There are over twenty Game Warden Joe Pickett novels now, and this one from 2015 is pretty far down the list. Depending on my reaction to Endangered, this may well end up being a series I will spend more time reading from in the future. Its Wyoming setting is certainly a big plus for me.

Now for the nonfiction I bought:

I've been fascinated by Buffalo Bill Cody for years, especially with his showmanship and the way he managed to bring such a complicated wild west show all over the country - and the world - the way he did. I've often wondered what his personal relationship with the Native Americans in the show was like...and what they felt about being killed off in every show they appeared in. Our day in the Buffalo Bill Center in Cody, Wy, only reinforced my curiosity. I hope that Deanne Stillman's Blood Brothers has some of the answers I want.

I'm a big fan of Tom Clavin's nonfiction, so when I saw his name on the cover of this Chief Red Cloud biography, I jumped on it. Red Cloud is officially the "only American Indian in history to defeat the United States Army in a war." The government actually ended up suing for peace almost entirely on Red Cloud's terms, and for a few years he and his people were allowed to live in peace with very little interference from the army and the settlers wanting fresh starts in the West. 

Those old-time outlaws like the James Gang, the Daltons, Billy the Kid, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, etc. have intrigued me since I was a kid growing up on black & white westerns on television and in the movies. Butch Cassidy spent a lot of time hiding out in a couple of the states we just visited (if all the road signs are to be believed, anyway), and this biography promises to be "The True Story of an American Outlaw" that I want to know more about. It should be fun.

In addition, this afternoon I came home from the library with these:

• Blood and Thunder: An Epic of the American West by Hampton Sides that is billed as "A Magnificent History of How the West Was Really Won - A Sweeping Tale of Shame and Glory."
• A Terrible Glory: Custer and the Little Bighorn: The Last Great Battle of the American West by James Donovan - self-explanatory
• The Comanche by T. Jensen Lacey - this is one book in a 14-book YA series in which each book concentrates on one of fourteen "major Native American tribes."
• The Real West (companion book to the Legends and Lies television series) by David Fisher - this one separates myth from fact in the lives of many of the key figures of the day
• Robert E. Lee and Me: A Southerner's Reckoning with the Myth of the Lost Cause by Ty Seidule - After initially avoiding this title when it was first published (and even before that), I think I'm finally ready to read this one.

This is not my reading plan for August, but I hope to get at least two or three of these read along with the other books I've already chosen for the month. I love being sidetracked a couple of times a year, and this looks like one of those times.