In my younger years, I read Herman Wouk’s “The Caine Mutiny” and “Marjorie Morningstar,” but somehow neglected two other bestsellers, his World War II saga “The Winds of War” and its sequel, “War and Remembrance.”

Inspired after reading David McCullough’s tribute to Wouk in “History Matters,” I recently picked up a paperback copy of “The Winds of War” from the public library and am three-quarters of the way through its 836 pages of small print.  

As author Thomas Rain Crowe discovered during his own long journey from Western North Carolina to California to Europe (and with due respect to another Western North Carolinian, Thomas Wolfe), you can go home again. Crowe did.

Reminiscent of “Starting From San Francisco,” one of the first books by Lawrence Ferlinghetti, San Francisco is also where Victor Depta spent some of his early years and where this 2024 reprint of his 1973 book “The Creek” (Ohio Univ. Press, 2024) begins — with references to Coit Tower, Nob Hill and the Fillmore District when he was there and reading Wordsworth, Whitman and Rimbaud.

Local author and award-winning Smoky Mountain News columnist Chris Cox will make an appearance at Smoky Mountain Roasters in Hazelwood from 2-4 p.m. on Saturday, July 26.

In May, a very special anniversary issue of the Asheville Poetry Review was released for public consumption celebrating 30 years as one of this country’s seminal literary journals. 

The following events will be held at City Lights Bookstore in Sylva.

• Elizabeth and Quintin Ellison will present “Land of Blue Shadows: Mountain Life in Verse & View” — a poetry and photography collaboration with the late George Ellison — at 3 p.m. Saturday, June 14.

Sometimes fictional books, when they’re written well, can give the same, if not more, insight to a people and culture than a history book can. Alan Paton’s “Cry, the Beloved Country” (Scribner, 2003, 316 pages) is one of those novels. 

Let's be clear. No one is “attacking” libraries because we all support the basic function of a true library which Webster's Dictionary defines as “a place in which literary, musical, artistic, or reference materials (such as books, manuscripts, recordings, or films) are kept for use but not for sale.” To spread disinformation that people are “attacking” the library we love is the dumbest thing I have ever heard. I think some people are just mad that the light has been shined under the bed at the problems.  

A friend of mine suggested “Wild Swans” (Simon & Schuster, Reprint Edition, 2003, 538 pages) and to say it did not disappoint would be an understatement. This family history is written by Jung Chang, who recounts the lives of her grandmother, mother and finally herself. 

Early in the 1970s, while living and working in Spain, Chen Maoping read a story in “National Geographic” about the Sahara Desert, and it captured her imagination. She became determined to live there.