The Reading Room

Author:  Anne Lamott

A must-read book for anyone considering writing as a career or serious avocation. Writing for an audience of novice writers, Lamott lays out for her readers what I've hoped to glean from all those authors' autobiographies. What does one do after

Author:  Philip Roth

It's about time I read Philip Roth, and why not start with the autobiography. There's a lot here dealing with the interplay of "fact" and fiction, and I marked a few passages about writing for later consideration. I must read more Roth, not only

Author:  Christina Vella

What was sparking the imagination of all Italy at the dawn of the 20th century? None other than a delicious real-life murder that occupied the front pages of Italy's many newspapers daily for several years. This fascinating story, meticulously

Author:  Jostein Gaarder

An introductory philosophy course in the guise of a book about an indtroductory philosophy course. The book was assigned reading in William's high school philosophy course. He enjoyed it, and I couldn't resist taking it up as well.

Authors:  Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner

The subtitle of this book might have been "The Rogue Economist Knows More Than Anyone Else About Everything Worth Knowing Because He's Smart and the Rest of Us Are Dunces." I never read "Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics," but it

Author:  B. McClennon Clark

This book is a must-read for anyone entering the political arena. The title is particularly apt; the story is told in an engaging and surprisingly intimate way by someone who's been there. I loved it for its insights into local politics, but even more as a

Author:  B. McClennon Clark

Email, online chatting, blogging and instant messaging are new tools of communications, but there's nothing quite like paper and pen.  Good, old-fashioned pen pals have worked for centuries to bridge physical distances and forge