Jokes, laughter, happiness and good health
As part of my gifts for Father’s Day this year, my daughter bought me a book. She apologized before handing it to me, saying “It’s really terrible and silly, and I almost didn’t give it to you.”
‘The Anxious Generation’ — Part 2
Editor’s note: This first part of this review was published in the July 24 edition of The Smoky Mountain News The evidence is clear that social media is not healthy for girls under the age of sixteen.
A bird’s eye view of feathered friends
In a remarkable book that combines eco-poetry, poetic prose and personal and scientific information by award-winning African-American ornithologist and professor at Clemson University, J. Drew Lanham, birds are the major focus, with Lanham even giving us a semi-humorous list of rules for birders.
Dealing with loss, grief, and the balm of love
On the first Saturday of June, my friend John and I were just leaving McKay Used Books in Manassas, Virginia, when I spotted a woman young enough to be my granddaughter seated at a table topped by a couple of piles of books.
Southern stories for summer reading
Perhaps like many people, summer is a time for me to finally read those books I’ve been wanting to get to. While this summer began with determination to dwindle the stack of my “to-read” books, that stack has ended up bigger than smaller.
Sebastian Junger on death, visits and physics
Every once in a while, I find myself engrossed in a book that suddenly delivers my ignorance to me on a silver platter.
Books, parrots, love and regrets
If Monica Wood’s “How to Read a Book” were a painting rather than a novel, it would be a triptych, one of those three-paneled works of art often hinged together so that it can be closed or displayed open.
A remedy for the spring-time blues
There are always seasons in life when you feel the need to get away from your day-to-day, and I have found myself in just such a season.
Two fine novels for spring reading
Two novels, one a classic Western set in 1885 Nevada, the other centered on Barcelona and the aftermath of the Spanish Civil war, snagged my attention this past week. I was busy, but every time I caught a break, I was on the front porch, enjoying the May weather and turning the pages.
Building a world beyond
Having just recently written a review for these pages of an anthology made up of multiple writers published in 2023 with a similar title that was edited by Ervin Laszlo, I am taking the liberty to review the much more singular and shorter primer that Laszlo wrote in 2022 prior to putting together his large anthology.
