Return to the Wild West

I read a lot, much of it fiction. Thats why i love my Kindle so much of course. On that (and dead tree volumes) i tend to read Star Trek novels and Scandinavian detective stories of course though occasionally i read something else. In fact last week i read a Nancy Mitford novel (Highland Fling), and it was very good though totally different to what i usually read of course.

One kind of story i used to read a lot were Westerns, i used to be an avid reader of books by the likes of JT Edson and Jim Slaughter. Many of these books i borrowed from Erdington and Shard End public libraries (readers who come across this blog post in some future archive may not know what a library is as the Tories are currently trying to abolish them but it was a way to borrow books for free).

I haven't read a western for years though but that changed when Jim Slaughter popped into my mind (as random things so often do) and of course within 5 minutes i was on the Amazon website buying one of his books (a second hand hardback older than me, though was only a couple of quids). Later on i also bought a Kindle-ified western story (Armageddon at Gold butte) for a similar price and that story i am reading now.

I think i prefer having my head in the stars but its nice to return to Terra Firma now and then, even if the setting of a Wild West gold rush town is probably just as strange as Deep Space 10. Though you probably get less Andorians.