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 […]
The stars at night are big and bright deep in the heart of Texas!
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 […]
Living in a Devil Town
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 […]
Never Rate a Book By Your Professor
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 […]
Ahhh Buck This Book
Are you a fan of Carl Hiaasen? So am I. I am a total sucker for ridiculous characters with a ridiculous backdrop of Florida where wacky and zany things happen. But much like a Sour Patch Kid, I can’t handle too much Hiaasen at once. No, I have to read a book here or there, chuckle at it, forget it, and grab another one in the future. I mention this because Buck Fever has a couple things going for it (in theory). One, our author […]
[wistful country tune plays]
Check another one off the NPR Summer of Love list. Texas Destiny is first in a trilogy about cowboy and rancher brothers living in an as-of-yet uncivilized West Texas. Preciously, they are named Dallas, Houston, and Austin. (“Our parents just named us after wherever they were living at the time,” Houston explains, which doesn’t alleviate my raised eyebrows considering Texas is huge, frequent travel in the Wild West is not something one does for fun in this era, and in the pre-birth control 19th century […]
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