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Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk.
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Long before I became a filmmaker and many years before I knew what pre-history meant, I was a restless traveler. I was an adventurer and a hiker, fascinated by maps and mountain peaks and constantly searching for the best place for a coffee break. In my list, I have tried to combine my passion for traveling with what is really important in life: people, friends, and travel companions.
I wish I could be there, in the back seat of Steinbeck’s pickup truck…with a 10-year-old French poodle named Charlie.
Steinbeck's travelogue is a farewell to the America he knew and an observation of a country that is changing before his eyes. What a joy it could have been to join this great writer (and the poodle) if only for a part of his 10,000-mile road trip across the USA at the beginning of the 60s.
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…
Long before I became a filmmaker and many years before I knew what pre-history meant, I was a restless traveler. I was an adventurer and a hiker, fascinated by maps and mountain peaks and constantly searching for the best place for a coffee break. In my list, I have tried to combine my passion for traveling with what is really important in life: people, friends, and travel companions.
Bryson inspired me while writing a book about my walk along the 600 miles of the Israel Trail.
He hiked the famous Appalachian Trail, but it was his traveling companion–an amusing type who has difficulty walking, who stands at the center of the book. I had more than one friend like this with me, and I learned that trees and landscapes are just the background in a travel book.
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.
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!
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?
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!
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.
I never liked children’s books, even as a child. I like words more than pictures and I always preferred literature that presents a more expansive view of the world. I favored myth, classics of urban sophistication, and stories about people whose lives were unknown or unfathomable. After nearly seventy years of reading, and as a writer and book reviewer, I now seek fiction that features the elders. Not just the shrewd witch or the wise auntie, but those still reaching for grand passions as well as grappling with the challenges of aging. In literature as in life, youth is often wasted on the young.
Imagine a novel with 80-year-old female protagonists!
And what history these friends have at their classic waterside community. They’ve seen it all – lifelong relationships, betrayals, the bonds of a hard marriage, and the challenges of children. Their commitment to each other is the glue that binds.
I have few friends from early childhood, so I was especially touched by their ability to read each other so well, with that kind of radar unique to old friends, even as late-life challenges threaten to tear them apart.
The masterful story of a lifelong friendship between two very different women with shared histories and buried secrets, tested in the twilight of their lives, set across the arc of the 20th century.
Celebrated children's book author Agnes Lee is determined to secure her legacy-to complete what she knows will be the final volume of her pseudonymously written Franklin Square novels; and even more consuming, to permanently protect the peninsula of majestic coast in Maine known as Fellowship Point. To donate the land to a trust, Agnes must convince shareholders to dissolve a generations-old partnership. And one of those shareholders…
I’m not as old as some of the characters in the books I’ve mentioned, but I’m getting there. With age, one learns to hold grief in one hand and gratitude in the other. The importance of friendship and community can hardly be overstated. I love reading books that represent older characters, especially women, as complex, life-embracing individuals without resorting to condescension. I strove to write such a book with Toby’s Last Resort. I’m not always writing about older characters, but in all my work, I want to dive below the surface, discover meaning in the ordinary, and treat my characters with respect.
Lucy and her ex, William, leave New York for a seaside house in Maine at the start of the pandemic.
Not much happens and a lot happens, which is Strout’s singular gift, to infuse the everyday with meaning. She touches on everything—slow dawning fears of the pandemic, missing her daughters, the murder of George Floyd and subsequent riots, the storming of the Capitol, her confusion about rekindling love with William.
I could relate to all of it, and I especially loved the reminder to embrace the life you’ve been given.
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • From Pulitzer Prize–winning author Elizabeth Strout comes a poignant, pitch-perfect novel about a divorced couple stuck together during lockdown—and the love, loss, despair, and hope that animate us even as the world seems to be falling apart.
“No novelist working today has Strout’s extraordinary capacity for radical empathy. . . . May droves of readers come to feel enlarged, comforted, and genuinely uplifted by Lucy’s story.”—The Boston Globe
ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The New York Times Book Review, The New Yorker, Oprah Daily, Entertainment Weekly, San Francisco Chronicle, NPR, Time, The…
I’m an Australian writer with a passion for literary fiction, especially novels centered on complex and multi-layered power dynamics. To me, relationships between women are particularly ripe for this kind of exploration – my own friendships with other women have been influential and formative, but not always easy! My interest in these darker and more complex dynamics of close friendship eventually led me to write my own novel on the topic. I’ve also published a range of essays, reviews, criticism, and creative nonfiction.
While many novels about female friendship focus on young women, The Weekend follows three women in their seventies, whose decades-long friendship has sustained them through illness, infidelity, divorce – and recently the death of their fourth close friend, Sylvie.
Drawn together over a weekend to clear out Sylvie’s house, the remaining women must grapple with their shared past and uncertain future. I loved this glimpse into the lives of older women – a reality not often portrayed in fiction – and admired Wood’s ability to make each of her three narrators flawed, relatable, and human.
If you like immersive character-driven novels, this book won’t disappoint.
People went on about death bringing friends together, but it wasn't true. The graveyard, the stony dirt - that's what it was like now . . . Despite the three women knowing each other better than their own siblings, Sylvie's death had opened up strange caverns of distance between them.
Four older women have a lifelong friendship of the best kind: loving, practical, frank and steadfast. But when Sylvie dies, the ground shifts dangerously for the remaining three. Can they survive together without her?
They are Jude, a once-famous restaurateur, Wendy, an acclaimed public…
I’m not as old as some of the characters in the books I’ve mentioned, but I’m getting there. With age, one learns to hold grief in one hand and gratitude in the other. The importance of friendship and community can hardly be overstated. I love reading books that represent older characters, especially women, as complex, life-embracing individuals without resorting to condescension. I strove to write such a book with Toby’s Last Resort. I’m not always writing about older characters, but in all my work, I want to dive below the surface, discover meaning in the ordinary, and treat my characters with respect.
The narrator of this story is a writer whose friend is dying of cancer.
The friend asks the narrator to accompany her through her final days, including the contemplation of suicide. The writer reluctantly agrees.
One unusual thing about this novel is that none of the characters have names; they’re referred to as the daughter, the ex, or the friend. This jarred me at first, but I grew used to it.
The narrator takes mental excursions about many topics, musing as a writer. While this sounds like a depressing set-up, I found this story to be a thoughtful and tender statement about connection.
The two women become surprisingly close while sharing this intimate part of life.
'I was totally overwhelmed by this extraordinary novel. A total joy - and laugh-out-loud funny' DEBORAH MOGGACH
The New York Times-bestselling, National Book Award-winning author of THE FRIEND brings her singular voice to a story about the meaning of life and death, and the value of companionship.
The woman at the heart of this extraordinary novel finds that everyone she meets has a common need: the urge to talk about themselves and to have an audience for their experiences. And so she tries to pay attention, to imagine and listen to what those around her are going through. But then…
I'm fascinated by stories about complicated friendships because they speak to our eternal need to be part of something. Everyone wants to have friends, especially when we’re young, but what if those friendships aren’t good for us? What happens when self-interest motivates our social choices? It seems there’s often a fragile boundary between love and hate. This volatile intensity becomes addictive. I'm a Canadian writer with a BA in English from the University of Ottawa. When writing fiction, I love exploring the toxic threads of jealousy, ambition, and obsession that both bind us together and tear us apart.
I adored Charlotte and Rose’s heartbreaking friendship.
First, Charlotte and Rose come of age in the late nineties, a perfect pair with an inseparable bond taking on New York City. As they grow up, it’s their individual problems and decisions that loosen the bolts holding them together. Some friendships shape us into who we are, so losing a friend brings grief and anger.
Charlotte and Rose are both rich, fully realized characters with goals that don’t always align. Bauer’s brilliant prose makes this a book I could read again and again.
'The instant feminist classic our generation has been waiting for' Ada Calhoun, author of Why We Can't Sleep
What happens when growing up means growing apart?
1997. New York.
Earnest, bookish Rose.
Brash, extrovert Charlotte.
When they moved to New York in the late nineties, coffee cost less than a dollar and you could still smoke in bars. You could stay up drinking all night, sat in vinyl booths patched up with duct tape.
Everyone has their own New York, and for Rose and Charlotte it was a place to feed their ambition, a place to dance and party and…
As a teenager, I didn’t have the lack of inhibition or abundant self-confidence to excel in high school drama. Like Sadie in Bit Players, I finally wowed the directors at my senior year audition, only to learn the lead was promised in advance to someone else. I recovered and stayed involved in theater: cast, crew, and front-of-house jobs for a summer theater program; the box office for Cornell’s MFA program; and supporting my kids’ drama activities. Performing in a show is different from any other experience. If you’ve been in a show, you know this. If you haven’t, read on to enter the magical world of theatre.
I like the grittiness and real-life issues addressed in this story. The pressures and joys of being students at an elite performing arts high school are described through the eyes of five friends: two actors, one writer/director, and two dancers. Aspirations, disintegrating friendships, budding romances, vengeance, and addiction interweave as the students forge ahead to the career-making (or breaking) Senior Showcase. Tragedy enfolds the friends in a dark ending as the dangers of the outside world pierce their high school bubble.
Theatre Quotient: Medium. Plot is split between dance and theater, and the show gets minimal pages.
It's always been you - you know that, right? At a prestigious New York City performing arts school, five friends connect over one dream of stardom. But for Joy, Diego, Liv, Ethan, and Dave, that dream falters under the pressure of second semester, senior year. Ambitions shift and change, new emotions rush to the surface, and a sense of urgency pulses among them: Their time together is running out. Diego hopes to get out of the friend zone. Liv wants to escape, losing herself in fantasies of the new guy. Ethan conspires to turn his muse into his girlfriend. Dave…
