Several years had passed since I’d last hunted with any enthusiasm. I’d go out into the field, find some game, and take home a few trophies, but the old thrill, that sense of anticipation and joy, had gone missing in action. I began to suspect my days of excitement and pleasure while on the hunt were at an end. 

Benjamin Merkle’s “The White Horse King: The Life of Alfred the Great” (Thomas Nelson, 2009, 272 pages) tells the story of the Wessex monarch who resisted the Vikings and after decades of fighting and prayer drove them out of his kingdom. He also began unifying Anglo-Saxon England into one realm, a merger only completed during the reign of Athelstan, Alfred’s grandson. 

Recently, I read an article about a Tolstoy short story. Curious if I had it, I pulled out Tolstoy’s, “Master and Man and Other Stories” (Penguin Classics, 2005, 293 pages) and found it. It was very short so I finished it in one sitting and moved on to the next story.

For all of you ’70s and ’80s hipsters, I’ve got one for you. In his new book, acclaimed author Paul Elie (“The Last Supper: Art, Faith, Sex and Controversy in the 1980s,” Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2025, 464 pages) takes a deep dive into the music and arts scene of the 1970s and 80s.

Reminiscent of “Starting From San Francisco,” one of the first books by Lawrence Ferlinghetti, San Francisco is also where Victor Depta spent some of his early years and where this 2024 reprint of his 1973 book “The Creek” (Ohio Univ. Press, 2024) begins — with references to Coit Tower, Nob Hill and the Fillmore District when he was there and reading Wordsworth, Whitman and Rimbaud.

Sometimes a book finds you when you need it and don’t even know you need it.

Over the last few years, I’ve read some of Andrew Klavan’s columns. He’s an excellent writer, the author of novels, film scripts and works of non-fiction.

I have always been a sucker for a good love story, so when I was told that J. M. Coetzee — who has been awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature — had a new novel and that it was a love story (“The Pole,” W. Norton & Co., 2023), I was all in. 

Friday, May 30, was a banner day I’ll long remember.

A soft Carolina-blue sky topped the Virginia hills and fields as I drove to novelist Mark Helprin’s farm, Windrow, in the countryside north of Charlottesville.

In May, a very special anniversary issue of the Asheville Poetry Review was released for public consumption celebrating 30 years as one of this country’s seminal literary journals. 

Next week, award-winning graphic novelist Andrew Aydin will return to Haywood County to help kick off an ambitious new creative endeavor — one that aims not only to elevate overlooked Appalachian voices but also to preserve the stories of Hurricane Helene’s survivors in a way that’s never been done before.