Book Riot Read Harder Challenge 2016: Read a book over 500 pages long. 
 I did it!!! After many attempts, I finally read far enough for this book to hook me, and boy did it. I read the whole second half in a weekend reading marathon that was one of my best reading experiences of late. Thank you to my book club for recommending it. I'm only sorry that I didn't finish in time for our discussions, because I actually found myself wishing this was a class assignment so I would have some framework for talking about it. Like Tamara, I found myself thinking of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, and also the books of L.M. Montgomery. I felt a similarity between the straightforward writing about real life and relationships, and the three-dimensional characters -- especially the emotional lives of men. 
 The book did have some stereotypes: the Magical Negro, the noble prostitute, the brutal Indian savage, the white savior. I was worried about these at first, but I found that the rich characterization lifted most of these characters out of a simple stereotype. The only characters who didn't get a chance to narrate and express themselves were the Indians. I felt this was a noticeable choice -- perhaps necessary for portraying an inhuman enemy, but also unfortunate since most of the characters are based on real people. 
 My other main experience was adjusting to the NON-romance of the cowboy life. WOW, was this violent. I will be remembering some of these scenes for a long time. It was like a survival story, but the characters were undertaking it intentionally. Perhaps that makes it a series of odysseys, as this helpful map of the story indicates (warning: map has spoilers). 
 As this review says, "The practice of trail-driving herds of beef cattle over long distances from ranch to railhead flourished for just a moment after the Civil War and before the widespread use of barbed wire. It was the tiniest fraction of our national experience and did not directly involve more than a few thousand people. But maybe more than anything else - more than wars, more than slavery, more than urbanization or immigration - it has animated a part of our imagination out of which flows a vital branch of popular culture." 
 There was so much longing and regret in this story. Was regret the theme, I often wondered? "The lack of a good reason for Call and McCrae's epic trail drive - ''Here you've brought these cattle all this way, with all this inconvenience to me and everybody else, and you don't have no reason in this world to be doing it,'' McCrae says to Call at one point - makes the drive seem oddly profound. It becomes a way of exploring whether what gives our lives meaning is the way we live (as Call and McCrae believe, though in different ways), or what we accomplish, or nothing at all." 
 I'm excited to watch the miniseries now. I read that Larry McMurtry originally wrote this as a screenplay, couldn't get the actors he wanted, and bought it back to write as a novel, which was then made into the miniseries. I really want to see the casting of these people who are so real to me. 
 Favorite quotes (adding a lot because my Kindle clippings are really hard to access now): 
 He had survived as a Ranger because he was quick to respond to what he had actually found, not because his planning was infallible. 
 Augustus felt a momentary pang--he liked Jake, but felt him to be too leaky a vessel to hold so much hope. But then, all vessels leaked to some degree. 
 It was an odd thing, but true, that the death of an enemy could affect you as much almost as much as the death of a friend. 
 "Jake Spoon has never taken care of nobody," Gus said. "Not even himself. He's the world's child, and the main point about him is that he'll always find somebody to take care of him. It used to be me and Call, but right now it's you. 
 He had known several men who blew their heads off, and he had pondered it much. It seemed to him it was probably because they could not take enough happiness just from the sky and the moon to carry them over the low feelings that came to all men. 
 "Life in San Francisco is still just life. If you want one thing too much it's likely to be a disappointment. The healthy way is to learn to like the everyday things, like soft beds and buttermilk--and feisty gentlemen." 
 "What if he just wants to marry you temporary?" Fowler asked. "It's always temporary," Elmira said. 
 What had made battle interesting over the years was not his opponents but his colleagues. 
 "It's his dern laziness," Call said. "Jake just kind of drifts. Any wind can blow him." 
 "Well, she wanted to marry," July said. It was all he could remember about it. Ellie had made it clear she wanted to marry. "That could have been another way of saying she wanted a change of scene," Clara said. "People get a hankering to quit what they're doing. They think they want to try something else. I do it myself. Half the time I think I'd like to pack up these girls and go live with my aunt in Richmond, Virginia." 
 "It doesn't do to sacrifice for people unless they want you to," Clara said. "It's just a waste." 
 "I know people ain't smart and often love those who don't care for them. Up to a point, I'm tolerant of that. Then past a point, I'm not tolerant of it. I think it's a sickness to grieve too much for those who never cared a fig for you." 
 "July don't want to face up to the fact that his wife never loved him," she said. "She ought to have loved him," Sally said. "Ought don't count for as much as a gnat, when you're talking about love," Clara said. 
 It was go ahead or go back, and he didn't mean to go back. It wasn't rational to think of driving cattle over eighty waterless miles, but he had learned in his years of tracking Indians that things which seemed impossible often weren't. They only became so if one thought about them too much so that fear took over. The thing to do was go. 
 He and Augustus had discussed the question of leadership many times. "It ain't complicated," Augustus maintained. "Most men doubt their own abilities. You don't. It's no wonder they want to keep you around. It keeps them from having to worry about failure all the time."