Book 43: Education of a Wandering Man: A Memoir by Louis L'Amour

I grew up hearing the name Louis L'Amour and that he was a famous, prolific Western writer, but that's it. My mother had one of his novels (but hated it) and mentioned him when we went to Zion National Park while I was in high school. So when I wanted to return to Zion but didn't have the money around '09 or '10, I tried reading him, figuring it was the next best thing. 
At that time I desperately wanted to move to the southwest but couldn't afford it. I fell in love with his books as he described landscapes, flora, the cool of the desert night, and how people figured out how to live in such a harsh landscape. A lot of people were confused why I'd want to read, in their perception, books about cattle rustlers fighting - these are just a portion of most of his Western novels. When I worked at the bookstore at O'Hare, I was the only employee who read Westerns and so many grizzled old men were baffled that when they asked for recommendations, I was the only capable one! 

I read Education of a Wandering Man: A Memoir after going through about 50 of his novels, it's less wellknown and harder to come by. I bought this copy immediately after reading the library's copy, around '11. Many reviewers complain that he swings between writing about his life, writing about bits of history that interest him, and philosophical instructions on how to learn & write; this frequent complaint is accurate, but I find this writing style fits well with his rambling life. Some of his opinions rub me the wrong way, he was very much the product of his time in some ways and didn't appear to want to reconsider some of his views. This memoir is a very human memoir, which fits his vocation perfectly.

In rereading my personal library, each of his novels that I owned wound up in the to-sell box. I sincerely tried reading them again, but I'm past all that; I read his novels because I wanted to live in the southwest, and now that I've lived in the southwest I've outgrown them. This was perhaps my fourth reading of his memoir, and I still appreciate it in a way that makes me want to keep my copy around. 

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/828165.Education_of_a_Wandering_Man 

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