COMANCHE MOON

I was at my brother's house over Christmas and wanted a book to read, and my brother handed me a nice, thick, hardback book from his bookshelf, which is loaded with nice, thick, hardback books. It was a book I'd never heard of, Comanche Moon, which is the prequel to Lonesome Dove. I'd never heard of Lonesome Dove either before last fall, when my brother gave me that book to read the last time I was at his house wanting something to read.

I've been reading the book on and off since Christmas, and I just finished it tonight, and there's some weird coincidences concerning it. First, I've noticed in the past week during football games on CBS that some kind of made-for-TV movie of Comanche Moon is supposed to air soon, maybe even tonight. How is it that a book written over 10 years ago, which I've just recently heard of and even more recently completed, happens to be broadcast as a TV movie right as I'm finishing the book? There were no ads for the movie when my brother gave me the book; it was only because he'd known I'd finished Lonesome Dove that he remembered to give me that particular book (as an identical twin, I feel qualified to sometimes speak as if I knew what my brother was thinking, even if he didn't actually tell me).

And the second weird coincidence is that, in the very last pages of the book, a character was mentioned who was just some background character that was never mentioned before or after. Just before I got to the page with that character, a friend from Eugene called and I got up to see who it was and didn't answer it 'cause I was so close to finishing the book. Well, the friend who called has a somewhat unusual name, Josh Korn, which just happened to be the name of the random background character in the book. Granted, the character in the book was spelled Josh Corn, but still, it was weird to see that name staring back at me right after I'd gotten the phone call.

Bizzare.