Category Archives: books
My Abandonments
James Joyce supposedly said, “Life is too short to read a bad book.” I like to think that is true, since I generally have no patience for stream of consciousness writing, and thus I will never read his Ulysses or … Continue reading
New Journalism is now quite old
I found on my Kindle a sample I had downloaded long ago of Joan Didion’s first essay collection, Slouching Toward Bethlehem. The first essay in the collection, Some Dreamers of the Golden Dream, was fantastic. Here’s the opening paragraph: THIS IS A … Continue reading
Carlton Keith & Hugh Pentecost
In the autumn of 2020, while our travels were restricted by the COVID-19 pandemic, I decided to read Keith Robertson’s crime novels. He was the author of the Henry Reed series which I enjoyed as a child, and he published six … Continue reading
Appointment in Samarra
My least favorite months have always been July and August, as Joklahoma’s sweltering and oppressively muggy summers drive me off the trails and pathways, except for early morning walks on weekends. One of my escapes is to read literature. In … Continue reading
Darkness at Noon
Long ago, early in my years of teaching high school physics, I came across an old paperback book from 1961, The Watershed, with a cover that showed Johannes Kepler and an illustration of his first and second laws of planetary … Continue reading
Meador Manor 