Traveling south to find America

“Appalachia can give us an eye towards how the national personality refracts like a diamond into a thousand rays” — Imani Perry 

Dylan scores with ‘The Philosophy of Modern Song’

This was a fine morning in the coffee shop.

Resurrected: a review of Mark Twain’s ‘Is He Dead?’

Samuel Clemens, best known by his penname Mark Twain, is arguably the master of American novelists, with his great classic “Huckleberry Finn” along with such stories as “Tom Sawyer,” “A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court,”and “The Gilded Age.”

‘McMullen Circle’ and picks for teen readers

It’s 1969-1970, and the world is changing at a fierce pace. The civil rights movement grips America’s cultural arena, and the war in Vietnam is raging. 

Straight up or subtle satire? You decide

Writers of fiction find themselves under several obligations. First and perhaps foremost, they must entertain their readers, enticing them to keep turning the pages. Doing so means creating believable characters who must get past some challenging hurdles, whether those involve love, war, nature, or other obstacles.

A surfer’s quest to find Zen on the sea

“If there is magic on the planet, it is contained in water.” — Loren Eiseley

It’s not often that one finds a book that is both sensibly spiritual and a very fun read. But such was the case on my reading of Jaimal Yogis’ coming-of-age, non-fiction memoir “Saltwater Buddha” (Wisdom Publications, 2009, 238 pages). 

Some bookish thoughts for the new year

Whatever our political beliefs or affiliations, few of us, I suspect, will look back on 2022 with pangs of nostalgia, at least in regard to events in our country at large.

Thoughts and books for your 
own ‘Happiness Project’

In her online article “World Happiness Report reveals the US has gotten happier in 2022,” Ann Schmidt relates that the United States moved from number 19 out of 146 nations to number 16 in its happiness index.

Dreams and near dreams — a return to the 60s

Baron Wormser, who is a former Poet Laureate of Maine, has a new novel titled “Some Months in 1968” (Woodhall Press, 2022, 344pgs) that has an image of a draft card on the cover and is a must-read for all of us 1960s Boomers.

Drunk and down but never defeated

Take a broken-hearted, alcoholic English professor, some colleagues seeking his dismissal from the university, several women who desire him for different reasons, and a series of encounters in bars in Charlottesville, Virginia, and you have the basic ingredients of Victor Cabas’s tragicomic “Postmodern Blues” (Hypocrite Press, 2020, 170 pages). 

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