Books on Tap met August 4th at Champion Brewery to discuss The Lincoln Highway by Amor Towles.  A lengthy (575 pages) summer read, it’s an adventure and road trip story about two brothers (Emmet and Billy) on a journey to (hopefully) find their long lost mother on the West coast on the 4th of July. Starting in Nebraska, there are numerous mishaps, primarily due to detention school escapees Woolly and Duchess showing up to go along for the ride.  The travelers end up heading east first, to New York City with the intention to follow the Lincoln Highway from Times Square to San Francisco, CA.  

With a few exceptions, our readers generally enjoyed (some even loved) this book. Not all of our readers caught on that the narrative was broken down into 10 descending chapters, to cover the travelers adventures over a 10 day period.  Most enjoyed that the story was told from the points of view of at least 7 different characters.  A few felt the ending was contrived and that aspects of the plot were unbelievable, but that The Lincoln Highway will make a good movie.  (Though there are no plans for a film currently in the works.)

(Librarians in the group sincerely doubted that a Nebraska public library would be open on a Sunday in the 1950s, but certainly appreciated the influence that the local librarian had on young Billy.)  Others had a hard time believing that main characters Emmet, Woolly and Duchess were just 18 years old. 

Other books mentioned:

A Gentleman in Moscow by Towles  (many of our readers spoke highly of this title)

Rules of Civility by Towles

Films:

“Raising Arizona”  (escapee connection)

Sleepless in Seattle  (young boy traveling cross country seeking mother figure)

Upcoming titles:

September 1st: The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

October 6th: Kindred by Octavia Butler