Prose

I've won very few awards in my life. I like to think I would have won more if I wasn't so lazy. But the first (and I'm trying to think, but it could be the only one) was for "most books read in kindergarten," away back in 1948. I lived in Badger, Iowa, a town of 300 or so Norwegian farmers and their relatives, and began my education in the same two-room schoolhouse that my grandmother had attended.

Books have been my life since that time. I don't know what I would have done without them. Here are a very few among the proverbial 10,000 things:

CHILDHOOD Read more about Thanks for the Books

When I visited England for the first time back in 1979, I prided myself on knowing all about "chemists" and "lorries" and "boots." When I was asked how I knew all this stuff, I told people I read a lot. Leaving them with the impression that I was talking about all the best in English literature. Oh, I had read my Austen and Dickens and Hardy, but the truth of the matter was that most of the "Englishisms" I knew came directly from Agatha Christie. Read more about Learning English

"...he (Humbert) wants her (Lolita), a living breathing human being, to become stationary, to give up her life for the still life he offers her in return." , Azar Nafisi

It's been too long since I read Vladimir Nabokov's to say anything of my own about it. I don't remember finding anything in it that spoke to me. Read more about Lolita

A tale of ancient China that never was but should have been. That's how the liner notes describe Barry Hughart's . and round out Hughart's delightful recounting of the adventures of Master Li and Number Ten Ox. Read more about My Private China

I'm going through one of those periodic scourings of the bookcases, looking for good homes for old favorites, and luckily I've found a few. These books will live a little longer on warm, dry bookshelves where I can still find them if I really need them. But should you want to try them for yourselves, take a look at these lists: Read more about Old Favorites: The Mysteries

In 2001, when it became apparent that my country was going to invade Afghanistan, a country my knowledge of which was limited to the fact that I knew how to spell it, some people took to the streets. I took to the books. Here's a list:

This set of CD's can be every bit as frustrating to use as some of the critics say, but for me worth it for articles like Maynard Owen Williams' 1931 piece on the Citroen Trans-Asiatic Expedition. Read more about Reading Afghanistan

For a rollicking good time roll in the blood of the flower of French chivalry, there's nothing quite like Bernard Cornwell's . I found the "grail quest" story line here a little silly, entirely unnecessary, since there is only one reason to read this book and that is to place yourself in the front lines at Crecy, circa 1346. Read more about The Glory of Old Timey War

The truth about Anthony Trollope, 1815 to 1882, is that he is so remarkably current.

I just finished reading . Here is an excerpt from a discussion of some radical legislation dealing with Irish tenant right: Read more about The Truth About Trollope

Somewhere in the beginning of this marvelous book, Scott Weidensaul tells us the story of the black-polled warbler, ("you could mail two of them for a single first-class stamp") and its migration across Canada and out over the Atlantic to its wintering grounds in Brazil. Ever see a kettle of hawks? A fall-out on the Texas coast? Neither have I, except here. Read more about Living on the Wind

by Alaa Al Aswany is a peek at the lives of one building's inhabitants in modern Cairo, Egyptian politics, and a bit of insight into the making of one jihadist.

In the light of Sunday's 9/11 remembrances, I remember the question some of us felt impelled to ask. "Why do they hate us?" Alaa Al Aswany tells us that it's not always about us. At the level of a young man from a Cairo rooftop, we don't even come into the picture. Read more about Sometimes It's Not About Us