Rating: 
Summary: True Grit: Truly Great
Review: True Grit has long been one of my favorite novels. I bought a copy in 1969 when I was 12 -- either right before or right after I saw the movie, I can't remember -- and read it straight through in a matter of days, then, as soon as I finished it, I turned right back to the first page and read the whole thing all over again. I've read it several times since then, including once out loud to my kids, who likewise loved it. What makes it great? The originality of the characters, the simple flow of the story, the color and reality of the dialogue, and the excellent movie that largely reflects the book. I love the action and the lapses in action; the conversations and the motives and quirks of the characters are as interesting and as colorful as Rooster's charge at Ned Pepper's gang or the ambush at the dugout. True Grit is a classic American novel.
Rating: 
Summary: An alright Adventure
Review: True Grit, by Charles Portis, wasn't the greatest adventure I've ever read but if you like westerns you'll like True Grit. To me the story just sort of dragged along. In the story a 14-year old girl was trying to find the man who killed her father, and helping her was a law man named Rooster Cogburn. I guess just reading about how long and weary their trip was is what made me start to lose interest in the book. But if you like suspense in your stories there is one part in the book that you will love. The girl falls into a pit full of snakes and has a gun pointed right at her head and there is no way out of it. So if you want to find out what happens to her you'll have to read the book.
Rating:
Summary: Regretable Ending
Review: True Grits ending was only regretable in the sense that the book had to end. I have watched the movie many times and picked up the book recently and found I enjoyed it much more than the movie. I am a John Wayne fan and had always assumed I liked the movie so much based on the good story, fine casting and because I am a John Wayne fan. This book made me realize I was also a Rooster Cogburn fan and now, a budding Portis fan. The writing is excellent, funny, fast-paced, exciting and sad, as it was designed, but most of all, it creates an ambiance steeped in life in the old west, in which real people lived. The book reveals no all good characters nor all bad bad men, but real human traits disliked and liked in each character. 34 years later I say thank you Charles Portis.
Rating:
Summary: Regretable Ending
Review: True Grits ending was only regretable in the sense that the book had to end. I have watched the movie many times and picked up the book recently and found I enjoyed it much more than the movie. I am a John Wayne fan and had always assumed I liked the movie so much based on the good story, fine casting and because I am a John Wayne fan. This book made me realize I was also a Rooster Cogburn fan and now, a budding Portis fan. The writing is excellent, funny, fast-paced, exciting and sad, as it was designed, but most of all, it creates an ambiance steeped in life in the old west, in which real people lived. The book reveals no all good characters nor all bad bad men, but real human traits disliked and liked in each character. 34 years later I say thank you Charles Portis.
Rating:
Summary: Charming and Original and Intriguing from Page One
Review: What a narrator! What a story! I loved the tone, plot, setting, and especially the characters in this book. Some people may quibble with the language, but it's an accurate rendition of the period, 1880's frontier "literary." One of the best books of the American West in our time, it ranks right up there with LITTLE BIG MAN. A wonderful, wonderful satire, somehow done with sweetness; it blows away the cliches that accrued to the genre for sixty years. How could anyone not love the heroine--yet be pleasantly maddened by her?
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