As an active senior who seeks outdoor adventures and who cringes whenever I hear someone say, “I’m too old to [fill in the blank]…”, I love both writing and reading books with older characters who believe instead, “You’re never too old.” I’m drawn to stories where older folks defy stereotypes and continue to relish new experiences, especially those involving the things I most enjoy: camping, hiking, and climbing. Toss in some fun and laughter and I’m there!
Ellie Dwyer, 61, is convinced bad luck comes in threes, and not just garden-variety, oh-well bad luck. How many people have to flee not one, but two natural disasters? In between the wildfire and the hurricane, her husband of nearly forty years suddenly left her for no reason she could fathom, disappearing from her life without a clue to his whereabouts.
Determined to reinvent her life, Ellie sets out on a journey across the country. Along the way to nowhere in particular, she buys a camper, becomes friends with a remarkable octogenarian, and starts to believe that good luck might also come in threes. Or does it? That depends on how she defines good luck.
What a great combination – time travel and an adventure in a classic RV!
In my opinion, this book is the best of Nortman’s fun Time Travel Trailer series, combining suspense, nostalgia, and time travel with a delightful trip down memory lane – or I should say, a trip along the original Route 66.
Lynne McBriar swore her vintage trailer would stay in a museum where it would be safe from further time travel. But when a museum in Texas wants to borrow it, she determines that she must deliver it herself. Her husband Kurt convinces her to take it along Route 66 for research he is doing. What starts out as a family vacation soon turns deadly. Travel can be dangerous any time, but when your trip involves the Time Travel Trailer, who knows where (or when) you will end up?
This story was beautifully written, remarkable, often amusing, and quite moving.
Lillian is an utterly original elderly woman, and her memories of her fascinating and unique life experiences from the 1930s through the 1980s form the basis of this outstanding novel. Witty, charming, vibrant, and moving.
I couldn’t help but cheer her on as she walked through the streets of New York and brought me along on her journey through memories of her life.
A love letter to city life in all its guts and grandeur, Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk by Kathleen Rooney paints a portrait of a remarkable woman across the canvas of a changing America: from the Jazz Age to the onset of the AIDS epidemic; the Great Depression to the birth of hip-hop.
“In my reckless and undiscouraged youth,” Lillian Boxfish writes, “I worked in a walnut-paneled office thirteen floors above West Thirty-Fifth Street…”
She took 1930s New York by storm, working her way up writing copy for R.H. Macy’s to become the highest paid…
Although I had read this classic many years ago, I decided to revisit it recently and found it even more enjoyable this time around.
Steinbeck’s real-life journey across America drew me into an older era in America and brought a fresh and immersive experience to the reader. Charley, the poodle, was an absolute delight.
An intimate journey across America, as told by one of its most beloved writers
To hear the speech of the real America, to smell the grass and the trees, to see the colors and the light-these were John Steinbeck's goals as he set out, at the age of fifty-eight, to rediscover the country he had been writing about for so many years.
With Charley, his French poodle, Steinbeck drives the interstates and the country roads, dines with truckers, encounters bears at Yellowstone and old friends in San Francisco. Along the way he reflects on the American character, racial hostility, the…
This is probably the funniest book I’ve ever read. Who knew hiking the Appalachian Trail could be so hilarious?
These true-life adventures – no, better to describe them as misadventures – will delight everyone from experienced hikers to weekend warriors to armchair adventurers. If you need a lift to your day, this is the book to pick up.
From the author of "Notes from a Small Island" and "The Lost Continent" comes this humorous report on his walk along the Appalachian Trail. The Trail covers 14 states and over 2000 miles, and stretches along the east coast of America from Maine in the north to Georgia in the south. It is famous for being the longest continuous footpath in the world. It snakes through some of the wildest and most specactular landscapes in America, as well as through some of its most poverty-stricken and primitive backwoods areas.
Young Lewis is a believable and relatable character and the aging Chester Wheeler is a classic curmudgeon (at first). Their highly unusual cross-country journey in an old RV is an absolute delight, with both the young man and the old man demonstrating that age is not a barrier to friendship and personal growth.
Unlikely road trip companions form an unexpected bond in an uplifting novel about the past-lost and found-by the New York Times and #1 Amazon Charts bestselling author.
Lewis Madigan is young, gay, out of work, and getting antsy when he's roped into providing end-of-life care for his insufferable homophobic neighbor, Chester Wheeler. Lewis doesn't need the aggravation, just the money. The only requirements: run errands, be on call, and put up with a miserable old churl no one else in Buffalo can bear. After exchanging barbs, bickering, baiting, and pushing buttons, Chester hits Lewis with the big ask.
When Lara was four years old, her father moved from Rochester, New York, to Anchorage, Alaska, a distance of over 4,000 miles. She spent her childhood chasing after him, flying a quarter of the way around the world to tug at the hem of his jacket.
Now that he is in his eighties, she contemplates her obligation to an absentee father. The Truth About Unringing Phones is an exploration of responsibility and culpability told in experimental and fragmented essays.
When Lara was four years old, her father moved from Rochester, New York, to Anchorage, Alaska, a distance of over 4,000 miles. She spent her childhood chasing after him, flying a quarter of the way around the world to tug at the hem of his jacket. Now that he is in his eighties, she contemplates her obligation to an absentee father.
The Truth About Unringing Phones: Essays on Yearning is an exploration of responsibility and culpability told in experimental and fragmented essays.
