Want to rant a bit

I just finished reading Lonesome Dove for the umpteenth time- I wore out a paper back and had to get a hard cover

For our neighbors, near and across the pond- it's been said that The Grapes of Wrath is the great American novel- I disagree. It is about the depression/dust bowl era and migrating form Oklahoma to California- okay- and? I've read it and had to force myself to keep reading and I did that because it's supposed to be soooo good- the movie didn't really grab me either. I actually liked the Arlo Guthrie movie better, that starred David Carradine, Bound For Glory, which too was about that era- Kris Kristofferson's song, Here Comes That Rainbow Again, was inspired from a scene in the movie The Grapes of Wrath-

USA Today, a fairly popular Newspaper wrote that if you read just one western novel in your life, it should be Lonesome Dove- I want to counter that- if you read one novel, period, in your life it should be Lonesome Dove- it is a love story of epic proportion- love between two men (not in a gay fashion either) and a love of life, no matter how hard life is- if I could choose a mentor for my life, it would be Gus McRae- though I don't do booze and he did, a lot- he enjoyed life no matter what the aggravation-

The story is about 2 retired Texas Rangers who take 3000 head of cattle that they steal from Mexico from the south Rio Grande River in South Texas to the wilds of Montana, 3000 miles north of where they started from - the characters portrayed, from the 2 main characters to the individual characters, which ranges from a piano player in a bar to the spoiled dove, to an old friend they have to hang for horse theft and just about everything in between, is amazing in detail-

If it doesn't capture your imagination you might check to see if you have one