Lonesome Dove: A Novel

Why it's worth it

Larry McMurtry's cattle-drive epic sends two retired Texas Rangers from a dusty border town all the way to Montana, and takes well past eight hundred pages to get there. It's the book on this list that readers most often call the best novel they've ever finished.

Gus and Call are the reason. One talks constantly and takes nothing seriously, the other says almost nothing and takes everything seriously, and McMurtry spends hundreds of pages letting you learn the difference between them. By the time the drive goes wrong, you know these men well enough that the losses hit like news about someone you've met.

If you think you don't like Westerns, this is the one that changes your mind. McMurtry has no interest in the clean mythology — the heroism is intermittent, the weather does more damage than the villains, and most of the danger is boredom, snakes and bad decisions. It reads less like a genre novel and more like a very long, very funny tragedy.

From our review of 8 historical fiction books, by Genevieve Dubois, Home & Living Expert

What we like

• +Gus and Call are the reason
• +If you think you don't like Westerns, this is the one that changes your mind
• +The length is the feature, not the price of admission
• +Owner feedback about this novel is unusually consistent, and it says two things

What to know

• –The first hundred pages test you
• –The period attitudes are on the page without much authorial comment