This novel was a Christmas gift from someone
who knows I love a good road story and an excellent historical coming-of-age tale –
and the title promised just that.
The Lincoln Highway was America’s first
interstate road; I had studied it, heard about it from my grandfather, and I
had lived near it, where it goes through southern Wyoming. I moved the gift book
to the top of the pile and read it exclusively until I finished it. I am
generally not monogamous when it comes to books – I read several at once, but
Towles’ novel demanded my full attention.
The
plot did not go as I expected. The young men go on a quest all right, but they
start in Nebraska and go East, not West. They go from Nebraska to New
York and get into trouble; I’m tearing my hair out. Who is driving this car?
Will these kids survive?
It was one of my favorite reads precisely because it
was unpredictable, and it felt like a story from post-war America, a time of
significant change, a decade I was born into. And I’m a sucker for a gift book with a
good title.
I picked this memoir up in Glasgow’s
International Airport, desperate for something to read on the long flight back
to Denver. The title is what drew me. It, too, promised a road trip of a
different sort: A walking-the-path story. I started reading while waiting for
my flight and was immediately engaged.
Past middle-aged, homeless hikers, this Welsh couple, husband and wife,
strikeout to walk the 630-mile South West Coast Path from Somerset to Dorset.
The husband has been recently diagnosed with an incurable disease. They have
lost their home and farm, and they decide to set out walking. Because why not?
Life is moving forward, one step at a time.
I
loved this story because the author writes from experience. She’s not a
journalist pretending to be homeless; she is homeless. She writes
frankly but with an ear for words. At times, she seems impulsive and naïve – as
unworldly as a runaway teenager - and at times, she writes with old soul
wisdom, penning a single line that takes my breath away.
Bits of light
humor, especially in the dialogue between the author and her husband, presumed
to be dying, feels just right. For one who likes the ups and downs of real road
stories, The Salt Path is just that.
"Polished, poignant... an inspiring story of true love."-Entertainment Weekly
A BEST BOOK OF 2019, NPR's Book Concierge SHORTLISTED FOR THE COSTA BOOK AWARD OVER 400,000 COPIES SOLD WORLDWIDE
The true story of a couple who lost everything and embarked on a transformative journey walking the South West Coast Path in England
Just days after Raynor Winn learns that Moth, her husband of thirty-two years, is terminally ill, their house and farm are taken away, along with their livelihood. With nothing left and little time, they make the brave and impulsive decision to walk the 630 miles of the sea-swept South…
Adventure takes many forms, and for many of us,
it pulls like the moon.
I am not a surfer, but I am a sailor and a skydiver. I know how elements can shape your life both subtly and
profoundly. We yearn to be fish, to be birds, to be one with elements we have
evolved away from. Adventures call: we
do the thing we must.
William Finnegan is a writer, an acclaimed journalist, a son, a brother,
a lover, a father, a husband, a friend, and a man. But through it all, he is a
surfer. His memoir is the confession and obsession of his love affair with the
wave, a force he is compelled to test himself with again and again.
William Finnegan writes sparely and unapologetically, and he does not deign to
explain the act of surfing or its terminology. He doesn’t need to.
I loved this
book for its honesty, unpretentiousness, and revelation of the surfing
subculture. In essence, this is an endless road trip worldwide to ride
the wave.
**Winner of the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Autobiography**
Included in President Obama's 2016 Summer Reading List
"Without a doubt, the finest surf book I've ever read . . . " -The New York Times Magazine
Barbarian Days is William Finnegan's memoir of an obsession, a complex enchantment. Surfing only looks like a sport. To initiates, it is something else: a beautiful addiction, a demanding course of study, a morally dangerous pastime, a way of life.
Raised in California and Hawaii, Finnegan started surfing as a child. He has chased waves all over the world, wandering for years through the South…
Life is a highway. Fifteen-year-old Ramie
Redfeather leaves Cheyenne with music in his pocket and his thumb in the air.
He’s looking to find his father, a man he’s never met. Ramie gets a ride with
Chas Sweeney, a seventeen-year-old driving a “borrowed” Cadillac Eldorado with
Maryland tags, who just happens to be passing through Cheyenne.
Chas is running
away from the wreckage of his world, sixteen hundred miles away. In Denver, Ramie and Chas meet Mae B. LaRoux, an enchanting young singer from Baton Rouge.
LaRoux, who struggles with a learning disability, is on a mission to become a
professional musician. The three runaways band together and set out to get LaRoux
to the Austin Music Festival, looking for Redfeather on the way.
Maddie says she loved this series for the tribe of feline characters, beginning with the pet cat Rusty, who adventures into the wild and meets up with the ThunderClan.
The animals’ descriptions and personalities made them seem real; she imagined their world and engaged in their adventures and the dangers they faced.
Maddie cited the suspenseful writing style as
keeping her engaged through four novels and counting.
Epic adventures. Fierce warrior cats. A thrilling fantasy world. It all begins here.
Read the book that began a phenomenon—and join the legion of fans who have made Erin Hunter’s Warriors series a #1 national bestseller.
For generations, four Clans of wild cats have shared the forest according to the laws laid down by their ancestors. But the warrior code has been threatened, and the ThunderClan cats are in grave danger. The sinister ShadowClan grows stronger every day. Noble warriors are dying—and some deaths are more mysterious than others.
In the midst of this turmoil appears an ordinary housecat named…
My teenage grandson Liam recommended to me
this book by the astrophysicist Neil DeGrasse Tyson, which he enthusiastically shares
insights from time to time. He discovered it on his own, listening to a
podcast, and wanted to read it. I bought us each a copy so I could appreciate it
with him. Tyson’s book became this year’s “family read.” His grandfather and I
read it, and now his mother is reading it.
What Liam appreciates
as much as Tyson’s sharing of astronomical discoveries is his scientific approach
and his insights on human civilization, sociology, culture, religion, race,
gender, and politics.
Books that appeal to young adults aren’t always
best-selling YA fiction or fantasy but books written for adults young and old.
Bringing his cosmic perspective to civilization on Earth, Neil deGrasse Tyson shines new light on the crucial fault lines of our time―war, politics, religion, truth, beauty, gender, and race―in a way that stimulates a deeper sense of unity for us all.
In a time when our political and cultural views feel more polarized than ever, Tyson provides a much-needed antidote to so much of what divides us, while making a passionate case for the twin chariots of enlightenment―a cosmic perspective and the rationality of science.
After thinking deeply about how science sees the world and about…
