Gus and I rented Oscar-winning Birdman Saturday night almost by accident. The words “blown away” come to mind. It’s a grown-up tale of a washed up movie star superhero trying to do something meaningful with the rest of his life….
Fiction
Hard news came out of Chapel Hill last week: three murders quick as three fatal shots, and one death long in coming. On the latter: Coach Dean Smith was a part of my childhood more than any other “celebrity” I…
Kristin Hannah didn’t plan it this way, but the publication of her latest novel, The Nightingale, couldn’t have come at a better moment, on the heels of the blockbuster World War II-inspired novel, All the Light We Cannot See. The Nightingale…
When you’re meeting a person for the first time – at a Starbucks, say – it helps to know how to identify each other. “I’ll be easy to spot in a bright pink coat,” I emailed Nashville author Adam Ross….
I had a bit of a shock when the New York Times named its top 10 books of 2014 – five fiction, five nonfiction. One of the works of fiction – Jenny Offill’s Department of Speculation – was off my…
All The Light We Cannot See is taking flight like The Goldfinch. It seems like everyone I know picked it up over Christmas if they hadn’t before. Set during World War II, it is the story of a blind girl in France…
My daughter in 10th grade has been helping organize a high school dance called “An Evening in Paris.” The student council settled on the theme last month, but it doesn’t feel the same after last week. You know what happened in…
In The Book of Strange New Things, Peter is both Preacher Man and Man of God: a charismatic leader and a man who prays alone. He’s a missionary to the Oasans, who by the way live on another planet. He’s…
Pepper spent the holiday recovering from emergency surgery Christmas Eve to remove a “foreign object” in her stomach wreaking havoc on her system. (And I do mean havoc.) She’s been in a happy haze with the good meds, but she didn’t…