Hey, What Ya Reading??? A book???

[delalluvia]

vacation, vacation.

I'm reading Truman Capote's In Cold Blood and the anthology Wyoming Fence Lines at the moment.
In cold Blood, is of course the classic documentary-styled novel about the Clutter murders in rural Kansas in the late fifties. The subject matter, to me, isn't really interesting, and I'm reading it for the style alone. Especially the beginning, with Capote's s description of small town America, is masterful.

Wyoming Fence Lines, have been mentioned before. It contains prose and poetry, all written on the same subject: fence lines (both visible and invisible ones). A very good read.

Well written book - very terse.  I found it chilling and creepy.

[Monika]

Well written book - very terse.  I found it chilling and creepy.

Yeah, that´s a good description.



Today I´m reading Judy Shepard´s "The Meaning of Matthew". I got it in the mail today and am already half-way through - it´s a very difficult book to put down.

[Jeff Wrangler]

365 Days of Walking the Red Road: The Native American Path to Leading a Spiritual Life Every Day. The author's name is Terri Jean, and it was copyrighted in 2003.

A bit of follow-up:

I continue to endorse this book, but I think I need to add that perhaps some of its historical entries need to be read with caution.

Here's the entry for this past Saturday, September 3:

In Remembrance: On this day in 1783, en entire Brule village was massacred by 1,300 soldiers avenging the death of 30 soldiers who were killed for murdering Conquering Bear, the Brule chief, during an argument over livestock.

That's awful, but something is not right about this entry. Possibly this is just an example of accidental conflating of two events, but as written this cannot be correct. For one thing, in 1783, the year the U.S. formally achieved independence from Britain, I don't think U.S. territory yet extended far enough west to take in the lands of the Brule Sioux. On the other hand, the part about 30 soldiers killed during an argument over livestock rang the bell of memory.

I have no idea where that date, 1783, comes from, but I think the rest of the entry is referring to the destruction of a Brule village by troops under Gen. William S. Harney in September 1855. Harney's expedition was sent out in retaliation for an event that happened the previous year. In 1854, an idiot lieutenant from Fort Laramie named Gratton lost his entire command of 30 men, including himself, when he attacked a Brule village over a cow that had wandered away from a Mormon pioneer who was traveling along the Oregon Trail. The cow got spooked, and before she could do damage in the village, somebody killed her, and the Indians, sensibly, ate her. The Mormon complained to the military authorities at Fort Laramie. The Indians offered to make restitution for the cow, but the army insisted that the person who killed the cow be turned over for punishment, which the Indians refused to do. Gratton and his men were sent out to apprehend the cow killer, and it all went downhill from there.