My Favorite Non-Superhero Books
I was a book lover long before I was a book writer. Since I wrote last week about my favorite superhero novels, I thought I’d broaden my horizons and discuss my favorite books of all genres.
Here they are, in no particular order:
1. The Travels of Jaimie McPheeters by Robert Lewis Taylor, published in 1958
I stumbled across this book in the public library when I was a kid. I fell in love with it instantly, and to this day re-read it from time to time. Essentially a coming of age story, it recounts the adventures of the title character as he and his alcoholic father travel across the American West during the mid-19th century to participate in the California Gold Rush. It’s loosely based on the diaries of a real boy who made the journey. It’s fun, funny, touching, and full of action and adventure. It reminds me a little of Twain’s The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.
The book was quite popular in its time (in fact, it won the 1958 Pulitzer Prize for fiction), but I’ve never encountered anyone in real life who’s read it. A shame. The book is a gem, and I highly recommend it.
2. The Matthew Scudder series of books by Lawrence Block
I’m a big fan of private detective novels, and these books are some of the best in the genre. The series stars Matthew Scudder, an alcoholic former New York City police detective turned unlicensed private eye. The early books are the best ones, but all of them are good. One of them, A Walk Among The Tombstones, was turned into a movie with Liam Neeson years ago. As is often (usually?) the case, the movie was not nearly as good as the book.
Though elderly, Mr. Block is still alive, so I pray he writes more Scudder books.
3. The Spenser series by Robert Parker
Another private detective series I highly recommend features Spenser, a Boston private eye who is as quick with his wit as he is with his gun. As many of my own readers have guessed, my Superhero Detective series was inspired by the Spenser series.
As with the Scudder series, the best books in the Spenser series are the early ones. With apologies to the late great Robert Parker, some of the later books feel like Mr. Parker was phoning it in a little and/or had run out of ideas.
With the permission of the Parker estate, other writers have written additional novels in the Spenser series and some of Parker’s other series. I can’t recommend those books, however. Without Parker behind the typewriter, the Spenser series just isn’t the same.
4. The Flashman Papers by George MacDonald Fraser
This series of novels and short stories is about Harry Flashman, a fictional British soldier in the Victorian era who plays a pivotal role in various real historical events.
I learned a lot about history I was ignorant of by reading these books. For example, did you know China went through a civil war in the mid-1800s with the rebellious side led by a Chinese man who claimed to be the brother of Jesus Christ?
You didn’t know that, you say? Well, neither did I until I read Fraser’s book Flashman and the Dragon.
Though Flashman is seen as a hero by most of the other characters in the books, he is actually a coward and a bully who lands in the soup time after time and comes out smelling like a rose. Laugh out loud funny and very politically incorrect by today’s standards, these books are not for the easily offended.
5. Gone With The Wind by Margaret Mitchell
Ms. Mitchell is often criticized as being a racist. For that and other reasons I resisted reading Gone With the Wind for years.
Once I started reading it, though, I literally could not put it down. The writing is spectacular. It’s seen as a masterpiece for a reason, even with its skewed, pro-Confederate depiction of the American South and of African Americans.
6. The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt by Edmund Morris
This book is the only work of non-fiction on this list. However, President Theodore Roosevelt led such an adventurous life that this biography of him reads like it’s fiction.
This book won the Pulitzer Prize for biography in 1980, and for good reason. I can’t recommend it highly enough.