The ever growing stack of my “to-read” books has had Amor Towles’ “A Gentleman in Moscow” for about a year now. Several friends, whose literary opinion I respect, raved about this novel and one of them even bought me my copy.

It’s spring of 1941 and Britain stands alone against Hitler’s Germany. The British aircraft dropping their bombs on German military and manufacturing bases, and cities, were having an effect on that nation’s morale and production, but every downed British aircraft meant fewer experienced airmen.

According to surveys and government data cited in the online article “The Changing Face of America’s Veteran Population,” 40 years ago about 18% of Americans were veterans. Today that number stands at 6%. 

As I peruse the shelves in the Jackson County Library’s “new releases” section, it is evident to me that there are more new titles written by women than by men. And while this may be true in literary circles in much the same way it is in politics these days, many of the storylines in these books being written by women have to do with a feminine renaissance that is going on world-wide.

Rick Childers will share his debut novel, “Turkeyfoot,” in conversation with Meagan Lucas at 3 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 28, at City Lights Bookstore in Sylva. 

Over 30 years ago, I read Helen Hooven Santmyer’s “And Ladies of the Club,” a doorstopper of a book chronicling life in a small Ohio town from the post-Civil War era to the early 1930s.

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.

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.

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.  

A little over three years ago, a stranger in a coffee shop with whom I’d struck up a conversation excused himself from the table, walked to his car and returned with a copy of Steven Pressfield’s “Gates of Fire.”