Lonesome Dove, Larry McMurtry’s Pulitzer-prize-winning 1985 novel, is one of the books Ivi is reading for her American Lit class this term. Since Ivi was recently at home sick in bed, Kim revived an old family tradition and started reading it aloud. I soon caught the apparently-same illness and while staying home from work for a few days, I listened in and also took up the reading chores. We got through about 250 of the novel’s nearly 1,000 pages by the time Ivi had recovered and decided to read it silently on her own to quicken the pace. I hope to return to the thing soon because, while I thought the 90s TV miniseries — my only experience with Lonesome Dove to this point — was pretty decent, the darn (“dern” in cowboy-speak) book is flat terrific: colorful, hilarious, gripping, detail-rich, and almost impossible to put down. Only 750 pages to go …