Lonesome Dove is one of the best books I have ever read. It has drama, action, love and everything that makes a good book good. The story begins with the author describing the characters and the story, and you really can connect with the characters. The main character is Gus McCrae, an ex Texas Ranger who is very lazy, and loves to drink. Despite this, he is an excellent ranger and his name is known all throughout America. The other main character is Call. He is a hard working, stubborn man who doesn't like ot talk alot. The story goes on from there. I recomend this book for advanced readers, who want a spellbinding story.

I have read "Dead Man's Walk", "Comanche Moon","Lonesome Dove" and am now starting "Streets of Larado". My only disappointment is that the books don't contain a map depicting the locations of the major events. I wish the author could post one, so I can track the events and better relate to the actual locations. I loved the books- I grew up in West Texas and can identify with much of the landscape descriptions.

Larry McMurtry has an easy-going, though smart, style, that I identify with deeply. He doesn't try to pummel you with big words and confusing sentences. He writes like it feels.

As a sequel to "Terms of Endearment", "The Evening Star" follows up on the life of Aurora Greenway and her three grandchildren. I found myself laughing out loud as I read this book and I fell in love with Aurora's wit, humor and sarcasm. The book was written with such creativity about the lives of its characters that it draws in your imagination and emotions. I read this book twice in a row and it only got better the second time around. This book deserves 10 Stars!

McMurtry's characters become so real to me that I can barely stand to let them go at the end of his books. I am so glad that I got to see what happened to the people from Terms of Endearment.

Larry McMurty gives us another masterpiece of humor and tears in the continued saga of Aurora Greenway

I've never been a huge fan of McMurtry, so I was reluctant to read, and even more hesitant to enjoy, this work. However, it took me quite by surprise. Film Flam is a look at the author's experience in the film world. Ever since his first novel, Horseman Pass By, was turned into a film (Hud), McMurtry has had a murky relationship with Hollywood. He tells us what it is like when someone attempts the impossible: to translate the language of fiction into the visual-aural composite of film. This book is witty, insightful, and entertaining.

For anyone who needs to understand how to perform a physical examination and a health assessment on a client this is the book for you!!!! The text is well written, easy to understand and helpful in allowing you, the student to become efficient in P.E. ... chech this text out!!!!! MB

Larry Mcmurtry's All My Friends Are Going To Be Strangers is a book that I shall never forget. I still wonder about the main character, Danny Deck, and how he is doing. Mcmurtry's character's are like old friends, they become so real in your mind that it is exciting to hear of them in subsequent novels. I first read Mcmurtry's Lonesome Dove at a friend's recomendation; although I had never liked "western genre". Mcmurtry's books I soon found out can not be categorized! In All My Friends Are Going to be Strangers I can smell and feel the Texas air. As a native Texan, I read Mcmurtry's novels and I am home again.

In a novel about one of Larry McMurtry's most lovable female characters, McMurtry shows the literary diversity that has caused some critics to claim that he has the best male insight into the female world of any modern American novelist. The novel develops the stories of memorable but minor characters from All My Friends and Moving On into an insightful look at late 1970s Hollywood, and McMurtry's creative literary strategy shows that he is a master of characterization.

My love of westerns prompted me to read this novel. I generally stay away from "Made for TV movie" novels, but I had heard from many of my friends that this was a novel that couldn't be passed up. I am very glad I took the time to get into the novel. It is a fabulous epic that I will read again and again. Not only that, but I have gone and purchased the other three books of the series, and am anxious to begin reading them.
"Lonesome Dove" starts out kind of slow. You are introduced to the main characters early on, but the story line doesn't really pick up until the journey to Montana begins. Lorena's capture was the clincher of the novel. From that point on I was hooked. I could not put the book down until I finished it. I liked the development of Lorena's character, but unfortunately McMurtry puts it to an abrupt ending as soon as they reach Nebraska. She immediately went from a major character to a background character.
I am also wondering a bit why McMurtry decided to leave Woodrow Call's character such a secret until the very end of the novel. Like Clara, I don't particularly like Call, and wonder why McMurtry made him the character who rides into the sunset. I guess I will have to read "Streets of Laredo" to find out.
Augustus McCrae is by far my favorite character of the novel. His character is so well developed that you feel like you know him personally. He is fun, playful, sensitive, caring, skilled, and opinionated. What a great guy! What a hero.
My second favorite character of the novel is Newt. You can see him mature before your eyes. I hope that some day a novel is written about him.
Using myth, mystery and superstition, I believe that Blue Duck is an awesome character. He is crude and devilish, and his ending is so grand. McMurtry gave us just enough information to keep us in suspense, but not enough to form the whole picture of who this villan was.
I highly recommend this book to anyone who is in for a great epic tale of the American west. I think McMurtry is one of the best American authors we have ever had. I cannot wait to pick up his other novels.

Larry McMurty created a true masterpiece when he wrote Lonesome Dove. This is the best book that I have ever read. From the bar fights over cards to the killing of horse thieves, this novel has every aspect of the old West in it. Detailed descriptions of each character, along with in depth descriptions of the work the do, brings this book alive while you are reading it. As the characters travel throughout the West on their many journeys they start to realize how they are all strangely linked in some unique way. This is how Larry McMurty helps you to understand the entire book, while leaving no questions left unanswered.
Augustus McCrae and Woodrow Call are two ex Texas Rangers who have dreams of driving horses and cattle north from Texas all the way to Montana. However, they can't this task alone. They must find willing and capable men to work for them on the drive. The outfit of men must endure many hardships if they are going to reach their goal of Montana with their herd. You must read this great book to find out if they will make it to Montana alive with their entire herd.

When fellow book lovers ask me to name my all-time favorite novel, Larry McMurtry's magnum opus impulsively rises to my lips. Upon reflection, this answer might not be fully accurate, as I've clutched many great books to my soul in the years since I first read Lonesome Dove. Nevertheless, I don't think this instinctive first response will ever really change. From the opening sentence, when Gus exiles the disruptive pigs from the sanctuary of his porch, I was pulled into this book like a starving prairie orphan longing to trail after these powerful characters and find companionship, sustenance and adventure in their midst.

While McMurtry tells a great tale, Lonesome Dove is essentially a story about love -- bedrock love, that is, in all its bittersweet, complicated immutability. It's about a friendship between two men who share a bond so strong, forged of history and loyalty, that it bridges large disparities of individual character. It's about a true but unfulfilled love between a man and woman that really wants to stay precisely there, deriving energy from the protracted state of tension. And it's about the unrequited love of a son for a father, who so naturally inhabits his role as leader, but remains achingly unable to breach the isolation of his dominion.

Of course, Gus is my favorite character - a man so full of courage, humor, verve and effortless passion for life that I half-wanted to be kidnapped by a passel of seedy outlaws so that he would come riding to my rescue. When Gus died, I put the book down for weeks in angry bereavement, and almost didn't forgive McMurtry. When the book itself ended, I grieved for months, and it was a good piece of time before I could break into another work of fiction with any satisfaction. I did move on to love other books, and I'll go on to love countless more. But Lonesome Dove is the book by which I will always instinctively judge others, from the standpoint of raw, visceral emotion and psychological resonance.

This book tells a compelling and interesting story about life in the post-civil war Cherokee Nation. Most of the historical context of the book is quite accurate. The characters are excellent: Zeke the hillbilly-ish patriarch and Ned the tribal senator turned warrior. Zeke and Ned is a great book for those who are not offended by the brutality of life in the 19th century Oklahoma Ozark mountains

If I were a professor of American literature, heaven forbid, this would be primary required reading. The lesson would center around the perfection of literary structure. Broken into thirds this novel exploits the classic themes of comedy, melodrama, and tragedy. The switch to first person narrative in the third portion is poetic brilliance. Yet, this story isn't for everybody. For example, I have never been a great Twain fan and this book seems to parallel those sweeping works. As an ex-professional athlete in an ambiguous sport I personally found "Lonesome Dove" the quintessential great American novel. I found the seemingly intellectual musings of Augustus McCray to be the answers of life. Oh, if only I could be 'Like Gus'. However, between the two, "Ned and Zeke" may have greater public appeal. If you aren't laughing out loud during the courthouse gun flight, you should consider renting a personality. If by the end of the first part, you haven't been absorbed by these historically correct characters, few books are for you. This book is definitely for you if you are interested in a western yarn that has pretensions of being the great American novel.

What a tale! I'm a Cherokee with a strong heritage, heard about Ned Christie while growing up. I read the review by one of the other Cherokees, and was surprised to see how disappointed they were in this story. How refreshing to see a book with flesh-and-blood characters--I'm sick of books that portray us as "noble savages". We are a people with yearnings, sorrows, flaws and loyalties, strong ones. We wanted, more than anything in the nineteenth century, to be left alone to lead our lives, to extend our heritage. ZEKE AND NED is told in the style of a tall tale, Mark Twainish, if you will, and what a story!!! A historical novel, key word here being "novel". McMurtry and Ossana have taken a critical piece of history and brought it to life. My grandfather read it, loved it, laughed out loud, and cried at the end. I'm sure the clever, engaging dialogue is from the writers' imaginations and not from any historical treatises, because such treatises don't exist. Most of the general facts are true, such as the courtroom shootout, Judge Parker's penchant for hanging, the questionable morals of the U.S. Marshals, the fiery determination of Ned Christie to just be left alone, the strength of our women and their loyalty to their men and their heritage. Hope you'll take a chance on this book. You won't be sorry you did.

Larry McMurtry is one of the finest American authors because he knows a simple rule to writing. KISS...Keep it simple, stupid. This story works because he didn't try and fill it with zany plot twists or artifical characters. Their isn't a false passage in the book and their isn't an instant of when the characters don't act like simple human beings. Anyone who has read this should see the 1971 film version by Peter Bogdanovich. It works the same way the book does thanks in no small part to Bogdanovich and McMurtry's screenplay. (They co-wrote it together.)

"The Last Picture Show" is undoubtedly one of Larry McMurtry's finest novels. Set in a small town on the barren North Central plains of 1950's Texas, this beautifully told coming-of-age story captures the dual spirit of the blind hopefulness and hard reality that are such a part of growing up. Only McMurtry could deliver such a brilliant cast of characters who are as equally eccentric as they are ultimately tragic. This coming-of-age story flows wonderfully against the vast and desolate backdrop we know as the state of Texas in a time when the wide-open ranges and cowboys of legend had given-way to the barbed-wire and oil derricks that had come to take their place. This is vintage McMurtry. If you enjoyed "Lonesome Dove", you'll certainly enjoy "The Last Picture Show"

Undoubtably, one of the best books I've read this year. A story about two dispossed high school seniors in a small Texas town during the 1950's. Sonny and Duane, the main characters find entering the adult world is a major transistion. The town itself is also changing. The leading business man, Sam the Lion, who is friends with all the players in the story, dies in the story, affecting changes throughout.

This book is highly prurient and not for the timid. The story follows the boys as they visit brothels, watch their friends take part in bestiality, and Sonny is involved with a woman who is in a sad and loveless marriage.

Despite the above topics, the characters appear very real and I felt very much attached to them. There were many sad moments in the book where the character's ultimate fate was shown.

Larry McMurtry, simple put, is my favorite author. I'm always excited to revisist his characters whether they're returning from "Terms of Endearment," "The Last Picture Show," or "Lonesome Dove," but always saddened to find out that I've reached the end of these sequels and trilogies.

For the first time, "Duane's Depressed" didn't leave me with such sad feelings when I finished the last page. By some miracle, Duane Moore survives through this last volume of the trilogy (unlike many main character's of Mr. McMurtry's other novels) and leaves me feeling hopeful. Often funny, sometimes depressing, "Duane's Depressed" is an excellent example of how well the author can jump back into former character's minds and tell a wonderful story. Even if you haven't read the previous two novels in this series, never fear: Larry McMurtry has developed these characters so well by this time that you won't have felt liked you missed much.

I would recommend "Duane's Depressed" among one of my favorite's from my favorite author. Enjoy!

I coud not put this book down and finished it in 4 hours. What a wonderful book! McMurtry is a great writer, turning out an intelligent captivating story with funny, true to life characters that you believe in and care about. Haven't we all wanted to just take some time and walk around, hoping to figure it all out? I love a book that's well written AND makes me laugh out loud.

Even though "Duane's Depressed" is the final book in a three part trilogy, a reader shouldn't feel that he/she have to read the first two books before reading this fine novel. I read the first two novels a number of year's ago, so my memory of them is fuzzy at best, but I found that this book engaged me from page one. McMurtry has done a fine job of capturing the feelings of a person who is depressed. The book has enough twists, humor, and quirky characters to keep the reader entertained. I found I couldn't put the book down because I wanted to follow Duane's search for happiness. This book is a "must read!"