100 books like The Lincoln Highway

When I was fifteen, I stayed up reading the end of this book under the covers with a flashlight because I could not put it down.

A scandalous bestseller in 1847, this was the first romance to feature an antihero. Mr. Rochester is far from pure and kind. He mocks Jane, who describes herself as small and plain and stands up to him. He has an immoral secret and when Jane learns of it, she leaves him. I doubt I would have.

I know it is no longer PC to love this book, but Mitchell did do awesome historical homework concerning the antebellum and reconstruction eras in Georgia.

It is far more than the romance between Scarlett O’Hara and Rhett Butler; rather, it is a portrait of a woman who goes from being a spoiled belle to one who will do anything to save her heritage—at the cost of love. It is not a romance, for sure.

I loved the three-part format of this book divided by time periods. The first part, set in 1935, describes an event that took place on a hot summer day in the grounds of the family’s country house garden. It’s seen from the different perspectives of thirteen-year-old Briony and her older sister Cecelia. The story evolves from there in parts two and three in unpredictable and devastating ways.

I appreciated the book’s in-depth exploration of the power of a lie and the devastating consequences of that lie. This psychological study of adult Briony’s guilt and subsequent atonement eloquently depicts how war makes demands of even the most privileged citizens. 

I’m fond of the subtle, psychologically complex writing of Henry James, and this is his best ghost story.

I like the 19th-century convention of a framing story to add verisimilitude instead of the modern presumption of willing suspension of disbelief. The consequent delay in getting into the story and the old-fashioned literary style and pacing might be challenging to some modern readers, but for me they enhanced the atmosphere and foreshadowing and gave another “turn of the screw” to the suspense, which continues until the last word.

The first time I read this book, I was far too young, and it was a chore. Yes, a dreadful thing to admit, but I  returned to it in my late twenties, and it was a different experience. I always make sure to have a copy nearby. Superbly written and full of characters you would wish to have at the next dinner party is how I like to describe this classic.

The dialogue, sharp witticisms, and observations are a joy, as they honestly depict and comment on the social norms of the Regency era in the UK. I love that it is all still so relatable to our own lives. In modern life, we have our fair share of people with notions! I wonder what Jane Austen would have thought of today’s social media whirl?

Richard Hughes has always been my favorite under-read author. I tell people he writes as though he were the love child of A. A. Milne and Joseph Conrad.

A High Wind begins in an idyllic Caribbean setting, with the five Thornton and two Fernandez children living in what seems to be pre-lapsarian innocence; but Hughes soon plunks them square into the world of “Typhoon” and Lord Jim.

There are hellacious hurricanes and swashbuckling pirates involved, but it’s the pirates that are finally defenseless in the face of the children they unluckily take on board from an England-bound passenger ship. Time and time again, Hughes captures the bizarre ways in which children see the world, just as often warped by imagination as consolidated by fact.

I’m struck by the way his empathy for his characters never guarantees that their fate in his hands will be anything other than brutal.

I really admire how this book traces two lines of a tumultuous family history through a series of short stories.

Opening in Ghana 250 years ago, the book follows two trajectories: one family branch that is kidnapped into slavery in America, and a second that remains in Africa while collaborating with slave traders.

This is a brave book that is not afraid to pose difficult questions, but in doing so, it opens a clear-eyed perspective on the way that history shapes us.

This is another story of Reconstruction in the Deep South but told from a very different angle.

Three girls, the master’s daughter, his mulatto offspring, and his former slave who seeks to buy her small parcel of land, are totally dependent on the man for their futures, but he has disappeared into Texas. Despite their youth and sex, they go off to find him. The book begins in modern times and flashes back to this story.

I could not wait for the author to continue telling their tale.

All adventures begin with The Odyssey.

Before there was Don Quixote, Huckleberry Finn, or Bilbo Baggins, there was brave Odysseus. It was Homer who first taught us what it means to desperately desire “to make it there and back again.” For me, The Odyssey struck a personal cord. As a warrior who once answered his nation’s call, it often wasn’t the battles in far distant lands, but the journey home, that was most difficult. Home, that beautiful, powerful word, holds great magic for Odysseus, and for me, too. Many ideas can send a hero on an adventure, but only love of home can bring him back again. These are the greatest adventures of all, and why The Odyssey is foundational for my own novel.

This epic by Homer has a great impact on epic culture.

Writing such an epic in the 700-800 BC era is mind-blowing, War of Troy which we used to read in comic books and movies has so well narrated citing the bravery of Greek and Trojan Heroes in the Iliad.

Everyone should read about the heroes of Iliad epic King Agamemnon, warrior Achilles and Odyssey’s Greek hero Odysseus, king of Ithaca and his return journey about the Trojan War. Greek mythology is always a great source of information about the ancient time wars and treaties.