Courtesy of Louis L’Amour’s Education of a Wandering Man:
The White Company by A. Conan Doyle. I’m not really a Sherlock Holmes fan, but this book about archers during the Middle Ages sounds like fun.
The Moonstone andThe Woman in White by WIlkie Collins. I read one of these, I think The Moonstone, a long time ago, but I don’t remember anything about it.
Kim by Rudyard Kipling. I also may have read part of this classic, but I don’t remember it either.
Bitter Bierce by C. Hartley Gratton. Mr. L’Amour recommends this biography of Ambrose Bierce.
Of Time and the River by Thomas Wolfe. Mr. L’Amour says the story isn’t great, but the poetry of the language is. I’ve never read anything by Thomas Wolfe..
Then, I want to read some books by Louis L’Amour: The Walking Drum, Hondo, and Sackett’s Land are the ones I’ve chosen, almost at random. L’Amour fans: are there others that I should read instead?
The Walking Drum is my favorite L’amour, and it isn’t a Western. My Dad has all of his books and I’ve read most of them. For a Western, I’d recommend Comstock Lode or The Lonesome Gods. But Walking Drum is the best, in my opinion.
The White Company is a romp, and great fun. Archers, but also knights in armor, a little romance, some danger, humor, lots of adventure. I like it a lot. It’s marred but a certain amount of anti-religious sentiment; apparently, the book was part of an attempt by Doyle to persuade the English to adopt a new ethic based on Honor and Chivalry rather than Christianity, and so the clerics in the tale don’t come off at all well. But it’s still great fun.