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: