It’s the spring of 1873 in the Wyoming Territory, and U.S. Marshal Tim Colter and his grizzled mentor and best friend, mountain man Jed Reno, are hunting down some train robbers when they come across a man dying of gunshot wounds. The victim turns out to be a Secret Service agent who as he breathes his last says, “President Grant … assassination … Dugan … trust nobody.” 

Having read and relished Amor Towles’ “A Gentleman in Moscow,” I picked up the first novel he published, “Rules of Civility” (Penguin Books, 2012, 368 pages) prepared to enjoy it as well. Unfortunately, some satisfying experiences elude repetition. 

Search online for “are more teens today suffering emotional problems,” and a boatload of websites pop to your command. Explore a few of these sites, and you’ll find psychologists and counselors of all kinds writing about the mental and emotional stresses faced by 21st century teens; 32% of these young people, for example, have an anxiety disorder, and 1 in 5 experience depression.  

The adage “There are no atheists in foxholes” catches our attention, but is too broad and imprecise for universal application.

My oldest son runs ultra-marathons from time to time, whereas for me, an ultra-marathon is staying awake from 3 a.m. to 10 p.m. with just one nap. At any rate, this Christmas he gifted me with a copy of Jesse Itzler’s “Living with a SEAL: 31 Days Training with the Toughest Man on the Planet” (Center Street, 2016, 288 pages). 

In Brad Thor’s thriller “Shadow of Doubt” (Atria/Emily Bestler Books, 2024, 368 pages), the Russians are possibly threatening a nuclear reaction to the war in the Ukraine, a scandal involving spies and treason is about to engulf France and a Russian who has defected to Norway with a massive portfolio of secrets finds himself in danger of exposure and assassination. 

There’s no fool like an old fool.

Allow me to serve as a prototype of that adage. I’m old, three years past the Good Book’s allotted age of three score and ten, and now I have once more donned my jester’s motley and bells by making resolutions for the New Year.

For all sorts of reasons, mostly having to do with research, the last two weeks brought more reading than usual my way, but with no single book finished for any possible review. One of these books, Pat Frank’s “Alas, Babylon” I read 58 years ago, while Anthony Esolen’s “Nostalgia” I needed I read just this last year.

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.

About 10 years ago, Dolly Parton became one of my heroines.

It wasn’t her music, or her movies, or her theme park that brought my salute. No — it was the day I was browsing the West Asheville Library and discovered information about Parton’s contribution to literature and books: the Imagination Library. 

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%. 

Approximately 20,000 murders occurred in the United States in 2023. These killings ranged in scope from gang battles to domestic violence. 

No book review today. Instead, some words about the importance of words — yours.

If you’re reading these words and live in Western North Carolina, Eastern Tennessee, or parts of Georgia and South Carolina, then you survived the Great Flood of 2024.  

Recently I had the opportunity to speak by phone with writer and podcaster Jennifer L. Scott. The author of the Madame Chic books — “Lessons from Madame Chic: 20 Stylish Secrets I Learned While Living in Paris” was the first — Scott is as delightful a conversationalist as we might expect, witty, thoughtful and easily given to laughter.

Glass half-full or glass half-empty?

For the past 20 years, we’ve heard from academics, some politicians and various commentators that America is a deeply racist society. In response, some colleges, the federal government and certain corporations require employees and students take instruction in DEI, or diversity, equity and inclusion.

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.

In “Stories I Lived to Tell: An Appalachian Memoir” (The University of North Carolina Press, 2024, 152 pages), 89-year-old storyteller and writer Gary Carden spends much of his time revisiting his youth and childhood.

As part of my gifts for Father’s Day this year, my daughter bought me a book. She apologized before handing it to me, saying “It’s really terrible and silly, and I almost didn’t give it to you.” 

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.

Every once in a while, I find myself engrossed in a book that suddenly delivers my ignorance to me on a silver platter.

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.”

All of us, to one extent or another, make our way through a world of unexamined phenomena. 

It’s a complex world, and we generally glide through it without thinking too much of its parts and machinery. We all carry mini-computers in our pockets, but ask us to explain how we can look at the screen of our phone and read a newspaper from New Delhi, and the best most of us can do is shrug.

Anyone interested in the history of our country will benefit by reading “The Dogs of War: 1861” (Oxford University Press, 2011, 128 pages).

As often as not, I check out books from the library I never read. They sit on my dining room table or in a special pile of library books on the floor nearby, waiting to make my acquaintance.

It was another ordinary day when I swung by the public library on my way to town. I picked out a couple of DVDs I needed — “Groundhog Day” and “Ghosts” — and then drifted along the “New Arrivals” bookshelves, browsing the authors and titles.

“In the land of the blind,” goes the old saying, “the one-eyed man is king.” 

In Walker Larson’s dystopian fantasy, “Hologram,” Aaron Larson Castillian turns this adage inside out.

“Stand your ground! Don’t fire unless fired upon! But if they want to have a war, let it begin here.” 

— Captain Parker, Lexington Green, 1775 

That many Americans today suffer a disconnect from their past is beyond argument. Some of us have seen those man-in-the-street encounters where a reporter will ask questions of pedestrians — “What event do we celebrate on the Fourth of July?” or “Name the countries America was fighting during the Second World War” — only to be met with embarrassed shrugs or a blank stare. 

Cold weather means more time indoors, and more time indoors means more time for books. Here are three for the season of Jack Frost, sweaters and robust beverages.  

Suppose, like some of us, you find yourself needing a quick word fix. You’ve got the jones for something to read, but you’re so short on time that even a short story seems as problematical an undertaking as “War and Peace.” You want a dash of amusement, a dollop of entertainment, and you want it now. 

In a recent online search, I came across “Good Riddance, But Now What?” by that master of light verse, Ogden Nash: 

In his 1897 travel book, “Following the Equator,” Mark Twain wrote , “Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; truth isn’t.”

When I read certain online commentaries about the possibility of war with China, I smile. Not happily, but grimly. It’s a smile that shakes its head, baffled and in disbelief by the innocence and naivete of the commentators.

Most of us are always on the look-out for a means of escape from this crazy old world or from our personal trials and tribulations.

Don’t worry. We’re not going to explore the relationship of Mrs. Bennet with her daughters in “Pride and Prejudice” or the nature of Marmee March in “Little Women,” who prayed “the fervent prayers only mothers utter.”

He was good friends with Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg. He taught shooting to another justice, Elaine Kagan, and became her hunting buddy. When he was under consideration for the post of judge on the D.C. Circuit Court, the FBI conducted its usual background investigation, examining his bank accounts and tax returns, and interviewing several dozen colleagues and friends. These interviews confirmed his integrity, intellectual gifts, and charisma, and are filled with such plaudits as “delightful and sensitive,” “of unimpeachable character,” “a model family man … his reputation above reproach …” and “the government could not have a better candidate for a position as a judge.”

He was good friends with Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg. He taught shooting to another justice, Elaine Kagan, and became her hunting buddy. When he was under consideration for the post of judge on the D.C. Circuit Court, the FBI conducted its usual background investigation, examining his bank accounts and tax returns, and interviewing several dozen colleagues and friends. These interviews confirmed his integrity, intellectual gifts, and charisma, and are filled with such plaudits as “delightful and sensitive,” “of unimpeachable character,” “a model family man … his reputation above reproach …” and “the government could not have a better candidate for a position as a judge.”

April is the season when Chaucer’s pilgrims gathered before setting off to Canterbury and the shrine of Saint Thomas Becket. “Oh, to be in England,” wrote poet Robert Browning, “Now that April’s there.” Later, T.S. Eliot added a different perspective: “April is the cruellest month, breeding lilacs out of a dead land.” In her poem “Spring,” Edna St. Vincent Millay also looks askance at the fourth month: “To what purpose, April, do you return again?” and then ends with “It is not enough that yearly, down this hill/April/Comes like an idiot, babbling and strewing flowers.”

Maybe it’s the mixed-up weather. The warmer temperatures have delivered a sort of raucous springtime mood, though Whatever the cause, a parade of books on all sorts of topics has passed through my hands, volumes taken from the library and from the pyramid of print on the floor of my study. Some I’ve read, some only browsed, but all deserve at least some garland of recognition. 

It’s always nice when the good things just keep coming.

It’s another one of those unremarkable winter afternoons when the outside temp is identical to the inside of my refrigerator, the sky is as gray as a friar’s habit, and the wind has just enough of a whistle to sting an old man’s cheeks.