Growing up in a region where actual cowboys did not exist (nor had they ever, really), and yet where the “cool kids” liked to wear western boots and drive stupidly oversized vehicles loosely based on trucks, I have a long nurtured aversion to all things “Western.” Western needs to be in quotes there, because I realize the word has other meanings, some of which I’m very fond of. I think you know what I mean by those quotes.

(Punctuation Nerd Sidebar: remember when quotes meant dialogue? Or that you were quoting something? Now they mean irony. I’m cool with that, but then I’m not an English major).

So I ran into my neighbor Matt at the library last week, and he was checking out a couple books by Robert B. Parker. The covers had unsmiling men standing near rustic buildings wearing period clothing including hats. “Are you reading Westerns?” I asked (Ooh look! quotes for dialogue!). He was. He recommended. I picked up Appaloosa.

Chances are not great that I will become a huge fan of westerns. I like my cowboys battling steampunk zombies rather than punching cows. I raced through this novel though, and plan to read the next couple in the series as well. Western may only ever be a secondary genre that feeds into my first love, but I recognize good stuff when I see it.

The best thing about Appaloosa was the dialogue, and how that shaped the two main characters. One reason the book read so fast was that much of it was dialogue, and most of the lines of said dialogue were one word long. Maybe three, if the guys were feeling loquacious. The incredibly sparse conversations nevertheless carved the characters in sharp relief. It was a masterful depiction of two men, both reticent and showing close to zero emotion, yet very different from each other and not hard to feel connected to. Part of what I’m experiencing is probably the difference in conventions from one genre to another, but at least some of it transfers I’m sure. I’ll be reading more of Robert Parker in an effort to abscond with some of his dialogue skillz.