Category: Books
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Rage, Honor, and the Long Ships Home: My Introduction to Homer
This is part of a series. To find the Table of Contents for this series start by clicking here. My 2026 journey along the spine of Western literature — what I’m calling The Literary Spine — got off to an exhilarating start earlier this year. Immediately, Homer’s epic, The Iliad, drew me into its ancient…
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A Walk Along the Spine of Western Literature
AI-generated image · Created with ChatGPT for Feature Image I’ve spent my retirement years reengaging with books, coffee, cuisine, and culture across the world. From reading books I was supposed to have read in high school to building friendships with those interested in arts and culture I found new interests laying near the surface and…
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Paris, With Hemingway as My Guide
There are books you read and set aside. And then there are books that change your itinerary. A few days before my family and I left for Paris, I finished A Moveable Feast — Ernest Hemingway’s memoir of his years as a young, nearly penniless writer living in the city in the 1920s. I’d been…
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You Already Know How to Write a Poem
Think about the last time something stopped you. A sky that went orange at the edges. A song that found you at exactly the wrong — or right — moment. The way a room feels after someone leaves it. You noticed. You felt something shift. That’s where poems begin. I decided at the start of…
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A Drink to Gather Around
“Good morning, Tennessee Jim.” I hear it every time I walk through the door at Caffè Vittoria on Hanover Street in Boston’s North End. Before I’ve said a word, my cappuccino and biscotti are already on their way to my table. Four years of visits. One barista who simply paid attention. It is, I’ve come…
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Two Faces of the Same Truth: Faces, Faith, and the Art of Being Seen
There are moments in reading when a book reaches across the page and grabs you by the collar — not with a shout, but with a whisper. That is what Theo of Golden did to me. Then again, unexpectedly, that same book quietly sent me back to a very different one I had read not…
The Curious Table 