Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner

This book follows Lyman Ward tracing his own family history--in particular that of his grandmother, who was friends with a number of nineteenth-century movers and thinkers--as he's confined to his wheelchair and fighting with his son for his independence. But as Ward traces the events of his grandmother's life, the reader gradually becomes aware that the difficulties and challenges she faced (particularly in her marriage) have more than historical interest for Lyman. While the book never directly answers the question of whether history must repeat itself, it suggests that by delving into the past, we can learn to understand our worst tendencies, even if we can't overcome them.

Train Dreams by Denis Johnson

This novella has a lyrical, haunted quality. It's a patchwork of anecdotes from the life of Robert Grainier, a day laborer in the West, who started life as an orphan and who loses his wife and infant daughter in a massive forest fire while he's away. The stories move back and forth in time, and taken together give something of a portrait of the building of the American West.

Prentice Alvin by Orson Scott Card

This book continues the story of Alvin Maker, focusing on his return to Hatrack to be the Smith's apprentice. Alvin's not just learning how to be a blacksmith, however, but also how to be a Maker. We also learn more about Peggy, the town Torch who leaves just before Alvin arrives in order to learn how to be a better help to him. Perhaps the most compelling part of the story, though, is the story of Arthur Stuart, a mixed-race boy whose mother saved him from a life of slavery, but whose freedom is always at threat throughout the book. I'm really enjoying this series.

Red Prophet by Orson Scott Card

This book continues the story of Alvin Maker, but it fits his story into that of William Henry Harrison, Tecumsah, and the Shawnee. It made me wish I knew more about that history, so I could tell what was accurate and what was stretched. I really liked the way this book thought about war, relations beaten very different groups of people, and how to live with the land. It's structure also was thought-provoking: the book overlaps in time with the first book, do the reader gets to experience some events all over again in a really powerful way.

The Seventh Son by Orson Scott Card

This book presents the childhood of Alvin Maker, the seventh son of a seventh son, and thus a very powerful figure indeed. In fact, because of Alvin's great power, he early in his life (even before his birth) attracts a sort of supernatural ire (which we later find out is the manifestation of the Unmaker). I really enjoyed this book, not just for the story of Alvin and his family (which was very entertaining, if a bit episodic at times), but also for the imaginative world the work inhabits. Here we have a variety of peoples contesting for power in the Americas in a history in which the colonies did not unite into one political body and in which George Washington was hanged as a traitor. Although the history stuff neither confuses or dominates the text, it is a great addition to a fine story. I can't wait to see where Alvin's luck takes him.

The Shaping of America: A Geographical Perspective on 500 Years of History: Volume III: Transcontinental America (1850-1915) by D. W. Meinig

This volume overlaps slightly with the previous volume; Meinig returns to before the Civil War to cover the geographical history of the West in more detail. Then he shifts his focus to the country as a whole to look at railroads, the economy, the population, and how people were beginning to be united again after the Civil War. He closes by looking at American spheres of influence in the world. As with previous volumes, this book provides a good mixture of specific and general, lots of maps, and a fair amount of history.

The Crack in the Lens by Steve Hockensmith

In this book Big Red and Old Red Amlingmeyer return to Old Red's old stomping grounds to try to solve the mystery of his murdered girlfriend. The plot definitely kept me on my toes. The writing is serviceable, if you don't mind lots of cowboy slang.

The Sisters Brothers by Patrick deWitt

I enjoyed reading this book, which chronicles the last job of a pair of hired killers, the Sisters Brothers, who are instructed by the mysterious Commodore to find and kill Herman Warm after extracting the formula (for what we discover only late in the novel) from him. I found the dynamics between Charlie and Eli Sisters particularly moving--deWitt does a great job of showing the characters' nuanced and changing morality and the shifting power dynamic between the brothers. A great Western!

The Black Dove by Steve Hockensmith

I enjoyed this murder mystery, although it depended heavily on the story of On the Wrong Track, the previous book in the series. The mystery plot was pretty good, although the series depends a bit heavily on slapstick style comedy for my tastes. I thought the ending was a bit out of nowhere, or at least that there weren't enough clues for the reader to have a fair shot.

On the Wrong Track by Steve Hockensmith

This mystery is a lot like some of the best Agatha Christie novels: because it's set on a train, so there's a limited cast of characters who could be the criminal. I found this plot quite engaging and the twists kept coming till the end, though, it did start a little slow.

The Postman Always Rings Twice, Double Indemnity, Mildred Pierce, and Selected Stories by James M. Cain

I reviewed the major parts of this collection separately, but I thought I might say a few words about how it works all together. I particularly enjoyed Mildred Pierce and Double Indemnity. The stories are generally more of the same, with the same bleak outlook, as the first two novellas. I think the novella length is better suited to the material though.

Mildred Pierce by James M. Cain

This story is less of a noir-style thriller than the others in this collection. An ordinary housewife, Mildred Pierce, throws her husband out after she tires of his infidelities and starts a restaurant business in order to keep herself and maintain her daughter's pride. Quickly the reader comes to realize, however, that the daughter is two-faced, catty, and brings out the worst of Mildred (especially in her judgment of how to spend money). The HBO series follows the novel very closely, except it glosses over the way Mildred takes Monty back to get to Veda, which the novel makes explicitly clear.

Double Indemnity by James M. Cain

In this novella an insurance salesman plots with a dissatisfied wife to help her murder her husband and collect double on the insurance policy (since the accident will happen on a train). This story works really well as a picture of what might drive an ordinary person to commit a crime, while also surprising the reader with a really ruthless character. I think this story was the best noir-style story in the collection.

The Postman Always Rings Twice by James M. Cain

In this novella we get the story of a drifter who spends some time at a small gas station in California, commits murder to get the wife of the owner of the station, and the repercussions of the murder. The style reminds me of Hemingway and the characters are all hard-boiled. The story was bleak, but enjoyable if you like noir style.

Holmes on the Range by Steve Hockensmith

I enjoyed this book more than the most recent one in this series. It's about two brothers who work together to investigate the mysterious circumstances at the Bar VR ranch. The mystery plot was quite well done; it took a little while for me to realize where everything was headed, but once I did, I enjoyed fitting the pieces together.

World's Greatest Sleuth! by Steve Hockensmith

I picked up this book after reading a review of three books that dealt in some way with Sherlock Holmes; I didn't realize I was going to be getting the fifth in a series of murder mysteries. I enjoyed the 1893 Columbian Exposition setting, and I thought the story itself was pretty well-plotted. I found the main detectives a bit overwhelmingly country at times, but I may read some of the other books in the series.

Moon Palace by Paul Auster

There is something both absurd and beautiful about this book, whose protagonist, Marco Stanley Fogg, after the death of his uncle (his only remaining family) drifts through college and life, eventually wasting away to almost nothing, until he is saved by a girl he's met once and his college roommate, and takes a job that leads him (temporarily) to the family he didn't know he was missing. There's a great deal of playful imagination in the book, and the West looms large--the same sort of West that fills the middle chunk of Willa Cather's The Professor's House. The image of the moon, too, fills the pages of the book. The tone of the book was very inviting; I could barely stand to put it down. I am looking forward to reading more of Auster.

The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration by Isabel Wilkerson

This book tells the story of the Great Migration (the movement of African Americans out of the South to cities in the North and West from about 1915 to 1975) through the lives of three of its participants: Ida Mae Gladney, George Starling, and Robert Pershing Foster. The individual lives were fascinating, the story of the Great Migration definitely needs to be told in a comprehensive way, and it was incredibly clear that Ms. Wilkerson has done incredible research to get the book off the ground. Still, I found the book a bit clunky--there was a lot of back-and-forth between the three stories (which weren't always presented in strict chronological order) and editorial here's-what-was-happening-specifically segments. I also felt that the prose was embroidered a bit (possibly to make the book more appealing to a non-academic audience). In principle, I feel that making history relevant to the widest possible audience is essential. In the case of this book, the prose style at times turned me off. Still, I was impressed by the depth of research and the book's ambitions (which were fulfilled in its contents, even if I wish the form had been more to my liking).

Weird Texas by Wesley Treat, Heather Shades, and Rob Riggs

This book contains an eclectic mixture of tales about Texas. The quality of the writing is uneven: it appears that some stories were sent in by readers and others were written by the books' compilers. I particularly enjoyed the stories about real places and events, rather than the ghost stories and the collections of stories about the same paranormal phenomenon. I'd use this book as a coffee table book or a conversation starter.

The Wake of Forgiveness by Bruce Machart

I received this book for free from Barnes and Noble as part of their First Look program. As we haven't yet finished discussing the book on the forums, I'll put the rest of my review behind a cut.