Wild and free: two books, two approaches
A friend who was a fan of the Lee Child’s novels used to wear a T-shirt reading, “What would Jack Reacher do?”
‘Just Maria’ a good read for all ages
What’s up with me?
In my old age, am I regressing backwards to my teenage days? Or is Jay Hardwig’s novel “Just Maria” (Fitzroy Books, 2021, 133 pages) aimed at an adult audience as well as adolescents?
Pancakes, with a side of ‘Craft & Culture’
Several years ago, when my children and grandchildren were gathering for a week at the beach in a house I’d rented, a good friend gave me a pre-vacation tip that put me in the winner’s circle with the grandkids. “Make them an ice cream breakfast,” she suggested.
Take the edge off winter with story hour
It’s late Saturday afternoon, February, that hour before supper when the little ones go bananas, and the 5-year-old and his sister are driving you bonkers, to the point where you want to plop them down in front of the television watching “Arthur” while you slosh some red wine into a glass and smoke a cigarette, though you only drink wine with supper or in the evenings, and you gave up the cigs years ago in college.
Making boys into men the Jocko Willink way
Many readers of The Smoky Mountain News, particularly younger adults, are probably familiar with Jocko Willink, a former Navy SEAL officer who is now renowned as a podcaster, speaker, and author. My sons and some other young men I know — and women too, for that matter — listen to his podcasts, and are inspired and learn from them.
A book from after the apocalypse
Manon Steffan Ros is a Welsh author of more than 40 books, writes in the Welsh language and has only this fall published her latest novel, “The Blue Book of Nebo” (Deep Vellum Publishing, 2021) which has already won several literary prizes in Wales.
A close encounter of the pleasant kind
Sometimes the right book just comes along.
Exploring the life of Cherokee’s first female chief
I was recently gifted with the loan of a book from my friend Lee Knight titled “Wilma Mankiller,” (TWODOT Books, 2021) written by journalist and biographer D.J. Herda. As a traveling lecturer for the Road Scholar Program, Lee had finished reading it and thought I might find it interesting.
More questions than answers in this book
To get the most out of out of James Lee Burke’s latest novel, “Another Kind of Eden” (Simon & Schuster, 2021, 243 pages), readers might want to first read Nathaniel Hawthorne’s short story, “Young Goodman Brown.” Here’s a short synopsis that may help.
Rowdy adventures: a review of “Sharpe’s Assassin”
Good grief!
Let me say that again: Good grief!