Texas

Cowboys Like Us…

The Final Country by James Crumley

February 26, 2019 by Jake Leave a Comment

This book inspired the title for the seventh episode of this season’s True Detective. When I finally finished Dave Halberstam’s wonderful-but-exhausting The Best and the Brightest, I decided to pick it up since it was the latest Crumley in my stack. And it might be my favorite. I’ve always liked the Milo books more than the Sughrue ones. There’s really no difference between the two characters; they’re both old, gruff alky war vets who function as ancillaries for the author. But for whatever reason, the three Milo books (I have yet to read the third Sughrue one) tend to be more streamlined and […]

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The Final Country by James Crumley

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2/26/2019 | Jake's CBR11 Review No:22 |

Caught out in the rain in the most dangerous Magic Tree House mission yet!

Hurricane Heroes in Texas #30 by Mary Pope Osborne

September 13, 2018 by BlackRaven Leave a Comment

By my count, this is number 16 in my bingo journey and The Last in a Series! The Magic Treehouse series is an interesting one. Ever since I have heard about it, I wanted to read one. However, I have only read some of the non-fiction companions to the fiction stories and some of her non-Treehouse books. When the read the last in a series came up on the bingo board, I figured why not? Well, the problem is, there are series within the series! There is the main story, the Merlin series and a couple others, plus the non-fiction […]

9/13/2018 BlackRaven's CBR10 Review No:354 |

Texas noir. #CBRBingo

Bluebird, Bluebird (Highway 59, #1) by Attica Locke

August 2, 2018 by narfna Leave a Comment

Project: Catch Up On Review Backlog commences. No promises on the quality of my next ten or so reviews. I just want to get them done. (This will probably unfortunately result in subpar reviews for books that deserve much better.) Let’s start with a book I finished over a month ago, Bluebird, Bluebird by Attica Locke. First things first, this book was incredibly well done. It’s a crime book set in Texas, featuring a black Texas Ranger as its protagonist. I knew that going in. I also knew that the author had previously said that her books were “too black […]

8/2/2018 narfna's CBR10 Review No:88 |

She had me at Dolly Parton.

Dumplin' by Julie Murphy

February 12, 2018 by chatelaine 1 Comment

Dumplin’, whose real name is Willowdean, is a smart, kind, capable, funny, and fat (her term) 16-year-old in small-town Texas. Being sixteen is sucky enough, am I right?!, but the “fat” part causes even more trouble than one would expect for Dumplin’ since her mom is the local pageant queen-turned-pageant director, still living on her own pageant days, staying thin to fit in a 30-year-old dress. She was herself once Miss Teen Blue Bonnet and you better believe that’s a big effin’ deal in Clover City. Dumplin’ is pretty bad-ass — she takes her mom in stride for the most […]

2/12/2018 chatelaine's CBR10 Review No:4 |

The Unknown Story of America’s First Serial Killer

The Midnight Assassin by Skip Hollandsworth

December 11, 2017 by Halbs 3 Comments

Before Jack the Ripper, there was The Midnight Assassin. He was a serial killer in Austin, Texas, and maybe the first serial killer. He sometimes simply scared women by standing in front of a window, sometimes beat women and went through their clothes, and sometimes killed them. His weapons of choice were iron rods inserted in the ears, an axe swung at the face, and a brick. In the mid-1880s he killed at least five women in Austin, totally changing the mood and even the landscape of Texas’ little capitol city. People won and lost their livelihoods and their freedom […]

12/11/2017 Halbs's CBR9 Review No:65 |

The stars at night are big and bright deep in the heart of Texas!

Lone Star: A History Of Texas And The Texans by T.R. Fehrenbach

December 3, 2016 by Halbs 3 Comments

When famed Texas historian T.R. Fehrenback died a few years ago, Texas Monthly eulogized the man and offered some early insight on his legacy and the book that made him famous – Lone Star: What makes Fehrenbach a great historian? The answer is that he is a great writer. He has a story to tell. Lone Star is indeed an epic. It is a work that covers not just chapters but centuries. On its pages we encounter generations of men who came to Texas to subdue a harsh land. Some succeeded; others could not take the measure of the land, and […]

12/3/2016 Halbs's CBR8 Review No:34 |

Living in a Devil Town

The Last Picture Show by Larry McMurtry

August 15, 2016 by Halbs 2 Comments

Flowery opining and editorial insight aside, Larry McMurtry’s The Last Picture Show is a great book full of truth. It’s funny, sad, and sometimes mean. Most of all, to me, it’s true. LPS finds the heart of what small town life is like, especially small town life in Texas. McMurtry probably sounds familiar, even to a casual reader. He wrote Lonesome Dove. That book, his most famous, was supposed to be his subversion of the western. Somehow, it became one of the most iconic westerns. I don’t think McMurtry ever quite knew what to make of that. LPS is much smaller in scope than Lonesome Dove, […]

8/15/2016 Halbs's CBR8 Review No:23 |

Never Rate a Book By Your Professor

Friendswood by Rene Steinke

June 2, 2016 by Ale Leave a Comment

Being objective is much harder when you know the author and she happens to be your professor. I decided to read Rene Steinke’s book as part of a ‘teaching early composition’ class I’m taking over the summer since “Friendswood” has been adopted as our official ‘college book’ for the year. It was good. There were even parts that made me feel things, and that’s really the whole goal of any book; to stir the emotions enough to make the reader feel something. But this wasn’t a perfect book; this wasn’t what we here at CBR would consider a 5-star, and […]

6/2/2016 Ale's CBR8 Review No:10 |

narfna on I’m not sure Alyssa Cole’s contemporaries are my kind of thingI don't think her contemporaries are really for me, either. But for some reason, this one really worked for me! I think a lot of...
badkittyuno on Waiting for the companion albumYou're right about the reviewer. That definitely got an eye-roll from me. But yes, I would love an album!
Classic on I Don’t Know What to SayIt's so good! I should have read it before now, but it was way down on my wish list.
Scootsa1000 on I Don’t Know What to SayI put this on my list last year thanks to Mrs Smith too. I guess I need to push it to the top of the...
narfna on “Happiness is not just an act of optimism – it is an act of defiance.” (CBR11Bingo)I pre-ordered this but I still haven't read it. I think I'm saving it because new Courtney Milans are so rare!

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