Louis L'Amour gives me another best-of-year book.

Posthumously, as one does.

It’s inspiring that a man who worked without stopping—for decades—got to the end of his life and still had stories ricocheting off the confines of his artistic mind, fueled by his experiences traveling the world or reading countless books. Part of my mania to read a hundred titles a year or more can be directly traced to Louis L’Amour’s autobiography EDUCATION OF A WANDERING MAN.

Aside from the stories he never got on paper, L’Amour also started a ton that he never finished. After he died it fell on the shoulders of his son Beau and an army of volunteers to sort through Louis’ papers and make sense of it all. Thus was born the line of books called Louis L’Amour’s Lost Treasures. Some of them are previously published stories, now with extra content and annotations by Beau, and others are collections of unfinished pieces.

Brett Cain told me about these collections last fall. My wife got Volume 1 for me as a Christmas gift, and after six months I finally finished it. It’s hard to blitz a book that is essentially 19 stories in one, none of them carrying to a conclusion; this has more value for the L’Amour completionist, or the writer who wants to learn from his process. If anything, as with EDUCATION, this book taught me that I don’t work hard enough to succeed like he did. Shame on me, now get back to work.

There are glimpses of beautiful things in all 19 of these pieces. You can see the spark that caught Louis’ imagination, and why he started the tale, even if it fizzled out before he could finish it. Among his many emulable strengths is his proficiency with short stories, a skillset I lack and could stand to improve, so there’s yet another degree of value in reading his unfinished words.

Kudos to Beau L’Amour for getting this organized. I found his website and dropped him an email, he responded a day or two later, rather graciously. His father died when I was only 4 years old, so he himself must be in his sixties at this point. I’ll eventually read Volume 2. Check it out if you’re thus inclined.

LOST TREASURES vol1 is a best-of-2023 book for me.