Best Reads (And They Aren't All Westerns)
Western writers share the books that most influenced their lives and craft.
Categories: Book Reviews
By: TW Editors 07/01/2007
Jeb Rosebrook is best known for his screenplay, Junior Bonner. He has taught screenwriting at Arizona State University and Scottsdale Community College. His completed works include a screenplay about author Willa Cather in Arizona and his novel, Saturday.
Walden
Henry David Thoreau
I read this first at an impressionable high school age. It is an intelligent, thoughtful, insightful look into a man and the world of his time—a great re-read, as applicable today as it was to me then.
The Grapes of Wrath
John Steinbeck
Powerful and unforgettable, this is a novel that I can pick up and savor the characters, moments and narrative. It grabs me and never lets go.
Lone Cowboy
Will James
In the sixth grade, while lying in my bunk at the Quarter Circle V Bar Ranch School, Will James awoke the cowboy in me.
From Here to Eternity
James Jones
This novel of the Regular Army on the eve of Pearl Harbor is riveting in its narrative and characters, particularly that of Pvt. Robert E. Lee Prewitt.
The Maltese Falcon
Dashiell Hammett
My ultimate Private Investigator novel, so evocative of San Francisco, with a pay-attention plot line and unforgettable characters, especially Sam Spade, the first of his kind and the top of the line.
The Great Gatsby
F. Scott Fitzgerald
Many believe this to be the greatest American novel ever—maybe, maybe not, but I consider it worthy, for the love of Daisy and Gatsby, and for the time and period of a brilliant young author.
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