Ranger Doug did it on a tour bus (AP) — The songs Ranger Doug writes often take on a certain literary quality. The yodeling frontman for Riders in the Sky, a local Grammy-winning western band, has had more than enough inspiration lately. In the past year, "Ranger" Doug Green finished reading all of the 1,001 books that "you must read before you die," an ambitious — and somewhat arbitrary — list that 100 scholars created and packaged into a book first published in 2006. The lifestyle of a traveling musician made it possible — along with a jump-start by bandmate Fred "Too Slim" LaBour, who gave Green the master list. If discovering other cultures was his favorite part of the undertaking, the thrill of hunting down elusive titles was his biggest surprise. "For 30 pages it's interesting in an academic sort of way, and over 900 pages it's like Chinese water torture," Green said of Stein's repetitive style.