Linda Collison's 3 favorite reads in 2023

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.

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.

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.

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.