A native of Sweden, Fredrik Backman’s work, published in 25 languages, has made him a #1 NYT best-selling author. You don’t need to be an ice hockey fan to enjoy his writing, but it might help. I’ve read three of his books, and they are all set in Sweden, but again, you don’t need to know very much about Sweden to enjoy his work. I find the development of characters to be the most powerful aspect of Backman’s writing.

Every chapter is named “A Man Called Ove,” followed by a descriptive phrase, yet I believe the entire work is about misdirection. The best thing you can say about Ove is that he is a curmudgeon with a long list of dislikes about his life and the world where he lives. The book is about the women in Ove’s world who guide and encourage this disagreeable “bitter neighbor from hell.” Backman has created a heartwarming story about remarkable women who learn how to deal with an angry old man. In every chapter, we are misdirected into thinking we are reading a story about Ove, who has learned not to trust people in white shirts.

Some lines in the book are so profound or memorable that I wrote them down while listening to the book on Audible. Here are some examples: “He looked at the cat with an expression reserved for cats carrying Jehovah’s Witnesses Bibles in their paws.” I can’t get that mental image out of my mind. How about this: “He said to her, ‘I just wanted to know what it felt like to be somebody you looked at.'” This last one gives me chills: “One man who cannot forget the past stares at the other who cannot remember the past.”

The Beartown Trilogy: Beartown, a book club selection, and Us Against You is the second in the series. I have yet to read the 3rd book. The setting is Beartown, a fictional hockey empire that lives to defeat a rival community in both hockey and life.

Frank Herbert (1920 – 1986), a Tacoma native, sold more science fiction books than any author in history. I became a fan after reading Dune while a college student. I don’t recall how many of his books I have read, but the list includes Dune Messiah, Children of Dune, God Emperor of Dune, and The White Plague. All the books, except the latter, are in paperback, leading me to the point of this story. The student newspaper article below explains why Herbert was on the CWU campus at my invitation. At the time, he lived in the Puget Sound area and drove to Ellensburg with his wife. Before his presentation, I had a few minutes to talk with Mr. Herbert at the student union building, and I asked if he would autograph my copy of Dune. He was sitting across a desk from me, and I noticed he glanced at his wife when I handed him my ($1.25) paperback copy. He graciously signed the book. It was not until years later that I realized how short-signed I was in asking an author of his statue to sign a paperback and why he glanced at his wife. I think he understood why a college student could not afford hardback books for recreational reading.

Frank-Herbert-signature

CWU-article-about-Frank-Herbert

Stephen King is a prolific and talented author of over 65 novels. He is known as the “King of Horror,” a genre that is not my favorite. However, I do admire King’s writing skills, humor, and his politics. My first reading of King was The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger, which was enough for many years. When I got my first Kindle in 2009 from Amazon, I downloaded Ur, a King novella that was only available in digital format, which I enjoyed. More recently, I read Billy Summers and Fairy Tale, both of which were engaging. I also read On Writing, in which King tells us about what is involved in being a best-selling author. King also wrote under a pseudonym, Richard Bachman, for several years, announcing in 1985 that Kachman’s death was from “cancer of the pseudonym.”

Reading a Donald Patrick Conroy novel is like watching an artist turn paint into forms and colors that grab your imagination. The first Conroy book I read, Lords of Discipline, drew me into the author’s world of military family life, violence, denial, discipline, loyalty, and sports. Conroy was the abused son of a U.S. Marine Corps fighter pilot who called himself The Great Santini, which became the title of his son’s 1976 novel. It also became a movie, as did many of Conroy’s novels. Conroy is recognized as a leading figure of late-20th Centry Southern literature. His writing caused family and other people to avoid and even sever ties with him, but Conroy persisted in speaking the truth on difficult topics such as military hazing, racism, and his own childhood pain. In an NYT interview, Conroy said, “The reason I write is to explain my life to myself . . . I’ve discovered that when I do, I’m explaining other people’s lives to them.”

The books shown above are only a sample of my reading of Pat Conroy. Other titles include My Losing Season and The Death of Santini.

I often read one of Conroy’s novels, cringing at one moment and then chuckling at the next paragraph. He wrote to express himself and make sense of his life. An example of his bitter-sweet writing is this compound sentence: “I never had anyone’s approval, so I’ve learned to live without it.”

For many years, I avoided John Grisham and his fellow writers of legal thrillers. The same was true about TV episodes based on courtroom scenes and legal dramas. As a practicing trial lawyer who handles both criminal and civil litigation, I did not see or appreciate the reality of my life compared to the entertainment in books, TV, or movies. At some point, I read about John Grisham’s real life as a practicing lawyer before and during his early writing career, so I gave The Testament (published in 1999) a chance, followed by The Pelican Brief (published in 1992). My misgivings about legal novels dissolve as I read the story of a soon-to-be deceased wealthy man with a broken relationship with his missionary daughter and the lawyer tasked with finding the woman on the mission field in Brazil. I have read almost every novel he has written, including the Theodore Boone legal thriller series written for young readers. Grisham has written a series of books based on other characters who are lawyers, including Jake Brigance and Mitch McDeere. His latest series is about Camino Island, and the lead character is a bookstore owner in Santa Rosa on the fictional Florida island of Camino, not to be confused with Camano Island in Washington State. Grisham’s descriptions of courtroom procedures, rules of evidence, legal strategies, and client behavior are much like my courtroom experiences.

This author deserves a special place on any book list with a series. Kenneth Martin Follett is one of my favorite novelists, starting with Eye of the Needle, a spy thriller written in 1978 and made into a movie of the same name. After publishing many thrillers and historical novels, he created at least two series: Century Trilogy (2010 to 2014) and the five-book series Kingsbridge (1989 to 2023). The British author has sold more than 160 million copies of his works. The first character you meet in the Kingsbridge series is Tom Builder, a 12th-century Master Stonemason with a brilliant mind for his craft and is commissioned to build a cathedral in a small English village called Kingsbridge. You meet his family, the nobility that oppresses Tom and his family, and the church clerics as they struggle to survive in a feudal system of injustice, disease, and death. Those characters and their children continue in the book series for several centuries.

Kingsbridge series:

Century Trilogy: