reading about Texas

Texas Nonficion (if your still going at this point): There are quite a bit of Texas flavored nonfiction classics. If your l looking for one book to get a feel of the state, I highly recommend:

Goodbye to a river by john graves.

It's wonderfully written and one of my absolute favorite books.

Texas. If you click '(others)' by any touchstone you should get a longer list of matches (partial or otherwise), and the option to see the full list if you scroll. Michener's is the second on the list (and why it isn't the first I have no idea, it 'ought' to be. It may be a question of numbers).

Tideland by Mitch Cullin is set somewhere in Texas ... he's really caught my interest ... anyone else read him?

A reference:

Ten suggestions for your library of Texas books

By GLENN DROMGOOLE

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/life/books/4481462.html

The ten books are:
nonfiction
The Longhorns by J. Frank Dobie
Texas Cowboy Cooking by Tom Perini
A Personal Country by A. C. Greene
Goodbye to a River by John Graves
Interwoven by Sallie Reynolds

fiction
The Time it Never Rained by Elmer Kelton
The Train to Estelline by Jane Roberts
Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry
The Original Adventures of Hank the Cowdog by John Erikson

anthology
Lone Star Literature by Don Graham (ed.)

And the touchstones actually all worked!

edited to move The Time it Never Rained from nonfiction to fiction...oops

Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy

Path to Power, first in a multipart biography of Lyndon Johnson is an amazing snapshot of 20th century Texas.

The Cattlemen by Mari Sandoz, a very under-rated author who painted the west with a skillful brush.

If you are looking for fiction a la romance, Texas Angel by Judith Pella is a historical fiction read, set in the 1800s when it was vastly unsettled.

I just finished Giant by Edna Ferber. It's a Pulitzer Prize winner, but what I found interesting is that, although cattle ranching is not as prominent as it once was, the social issues she presents are still problems today.

I can recommend some short stories: Corpus Christi by Bret Anthony Johnston - very atmospheric.

I definitely second the Hank the Cowdog series; it's brilliant!

I'd dispute a couple of yer choices, although I agree with most. J. Frank Dobie is, to my mind, over-rated as an author. Larry McMurtry got his number: he was too good a storyteller to like being constricted by a bunch of facts, and enough of a historian that he couldn't abandon the facts, and the two in combination restrained him. And as far as McMurtry goes, while Lonesome Dove was certainly good, I much prefer The Last Picture Show, which tells the grim, hopeless truth about How Life Was in that place, at that time. That's my piece of country, and I can witness first-hand to its truth.

One fiction title I'd add would be George Sessions Perry's Hold Autumn in Your Hand, which is pretty honest about agricultural Texas. It's another grim story, but Texas can be a pretty damn grim state.

An EXcellent title that gets overlooked a lot these days is The Evolution of a State, or, Recollections of Old Texas Days by Noah Smithwick. Smithwick is the source for many of the stories about early Texas that have by now become legend—but he was there, and describes most of it at first hand. He was there for a lot, too--seemed to have a knack for being in the right place at the right time to know everyone and see anything important.

I absolutely agree about the value of The Time It Never Rained; people (including my own parents) who lived through the Great Drought say that book tells more truth about it than any of the historians have. Ben K. Green, a minor (but very entertaining) Texas author, said of it "I had to go open the refrigerator door and sit in front of it to finish the book, I was so damn hot and dry."

The story collection You know when the men are gone by Siobhan Fallon takes place at the Fort Worth military base.

Holes is a great one and you can't forget Texas by James A. Michner. Here's a bunch more....

http://avidreader25.blogspot.com/2012/11/reading-states-texas.html