'The Lincoln Highway' by Amor Towles

The Lincoln Highway, Amor Towles (4.0)

I really enjoy Amor Towles’s characters, they are never all good or all bad, but at least one can be called ‘charming’. In this story the younger brother, Billy, gets to be the charming one. Throughout the book, the reader holds their breath so that nothing bad will occur to him. His innocence and belief in people were refreshing to read. Like the heroes in the book he carries with him, he and his brother, Emmett, are on a perilous journey. They meet interesting people, have companions join them and have obstacles put in their way. The ending was not quite what I expected, and I felt the book ended only part-way through the journey. I would have liked to have seen where Towles would take them. 

'The Old Ways' by Robert MacFarlane

 The Old Ways, Robert MacFarlane (2.5)

I liked the idea of this book a lot more than I liked reading it. A book describing a variety of walks, both the experience of the journey today and its history, sounds perfect. Unfortunately, I lost the story of each walk amongst the ornate language and liberal use of synonyms and metaphors. Good synonyms stand out to me, used every other sentence and I’m less appreciative. I did like the variety of paths and some of the characters the author meets were profoundly interesting. As with his previous book, there were nuggets of gold, but I was not keen on prospecting.