A Brief History of Thought: A Philosophical Guide to Living, by Luc Ferry (Harper Perennial, 2011, 282 pp.) Last week the subject was the creation of our individual identity—what makes us who we are? This week’s subject is coming to terms with our place in the universe: how we should go about living our lives …Continue Reading »
In the Darkroom, by Susan Faludi (Metropolitan Books/Henry Holt and Company, 2016, 417 pp.) What creates our identity and makes us the person that we are? Our gender? Our sexual organs? Our DNA and our parents? Our country of origin? Religion and History? Award-winning journalist Susan Faludi received in 2004 an email from her father, …Continue Reading »
Beat to Quarters: Horatio Hornblower, Vol. 1, by C.S. Forester (1938, Book of the Month Club Edition, 220 pp.) The theme this week, like last week, is: where have these books been all my life? How am I just now discovering the glory that is C.S. Forester’s Horatio Hornblower series? I well remember seeing the …Continue Reading »
The Black Arrow: A Tale of the Two Roses by Robert Louis Stevenson (1888; Easton Press edition, with illustrations by N.C. Wyeth, 328 pp.) Unlike many people—and for reasons I can’t now fathom—I never read Robert Louis Stevenson as a boy. Not until my mid-30s did I read Treasure Island, and then 10 years more …Continue Reading »
The Wine Lover’s Daughter: A Memoir by Anne Fadiman (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2017, 256 pp.) I first discovered Clifton “Kip” Fadiman 30 years ago through a battered copy of his 1960 book, The Lifetime Reading Plan, found while prowling the stacks at Oxford Too, that beloved now-defunct used bookstore in Atlanta’s Peachtree Battle Shopping …Continue Reading »