A Million Ways To Die In The West by Seth MacFarlane

Albert Stark has had it with the unpredictable and often hard life that comes with living in the 1880’s in the wild western frontier.  He can’t really shoot a gun, he is not what you would call a fabulous sheep herder, and he just lost his best girl to a sniveling gunslinger who makes Albert’s meager attempts look like he is shooting with his feet.

And…

there are too many ways to die in this type of living.  Duels at high noon, snakes the size of trees, bad water, bar fights, illness, messing with wrong dude… and oh yeah, befriending the wrong dudes wife…

for goodness sakes… it’s the 80’s!  Why cant we all just get along?

 

 

In my defense…

(Is that a good way to start out a review?)

I love the sound of this read… fun, light funny, and my book club gals would o wild with laughter to know that I actually cracked into a story that has to do with cowboys as I am very anti cowboy, western, cowboy boots, and honestly… I dont like the hats either.  It’s just a personal preference, if a western comes into our groups reading choices, it will not get my vote.  😛

I can tell you I too was surprised when I said yes to reviewing this book, A Million Ways To Die In The West.  The draw was honestly (and this is where my defense comes in) it sounded funny.

It was.  Albert’s character is a hoot.  And while I am not a big fan of Seth MacFarlane’s work, he can be funny.  Fair warning:  there are parts of this read that are extremely crude.  SO crude in fact that I felt I had made a big mistake and almost stopped listening to this audio.  Almost.  What held me was that if you could put up with some over the top grossness, there is a funny storyline – and it does eek out as the story moves on and that beginning over the top crud subsides, not completely, but to a tolerable level.  Faint of heart, easily offended – this book is not for you.

This 4 CD, 5 hour-ish read was fun and different from anything I had read recently.  I liked the craziness of it and had a few moments of laughing out loud.

 

Anna:  While we are here at the fair I would love to get one of the picture things taken!

Albert:  Really?

Anna:  Oh yes!  I have never had one taken before!

Albert:  That’s horse s***!

Anna:  No really, I haven’t…

Albert:  Uh, no, I mean that’s horse s***, right there, don’t step in it.

And the couple stepped around the steaming pile.

 

 Funny… lite….