Water For Elephants and Lonesome Dove

I finished reading Water For Elephants on Saturday and I have to say I really liked it.  Uncle Al was Evil, August was crazy and it just worked so well.  I won't say much about the book other than that because I don't wish to reveal any twists to someone who hasn't read it yet.

When I was younger I did not enjoy books written in the first person.  I found them to be narcissistic simply because I could not separate writer from narrator.  But I had a new awaking to the style about ten years ago while reading a lot of nonfiction and it has opened me up to a vast amount of great works. 

I'm working on the BBC top 100 now.  I checked the list a few weeks ago and had discovered that I had read 22 so far.  I read "Animal Farm" a couple of weeks ago and am now reading "The Kite Runner."  I refuse to read Dickens because I have seen so many of his works on stage and screen that I feel I will be wasting my reading hours.  I'll need to get past 50 so I feel like I have accomplished something.  However, I was disappointed that the BBC did not recognize my favorite novel of all time, "Lonesome Dove."

I read this book when I was 19 years old and it started to open my eyes.  Gus and Call were two sides of the same coin, but when it comes down to it I had to identify with Gus.  Call created and emotional prison for himself and had a life without love our family.  Gus was a free wheeler who had married three times and never stopped loving Claire, his first love.  His attitude of, "It's not dying I'm talking about, it's living."  Is a great motto.