Gone fishing for the day.  Celebrating 13 years of blogging and 12 years of Just Read It video book interviews. I’m back next week.  Thank you, readers!

A friend sent me the name of a woman she thought would make a wonderful guest for my book Vlog, Just Read It. A historian with a new volume published about the lives of notable women, her appearance on the program seemed apt, so, I extended an invitation for her to appear in an upcomi

Like the boy who cried wolf, U. S. Senator Bernie Sanders has long blamed oligarchs for weakening our democracy. Of late, his prognostications ring true.  Vast fortunes concentrated in the hands of large corporations and a few individuals have weakened the middle class, leading the

The email came as a disappointment.  My friend had come down with Covid. That meant a reading of his short stories, both a public and Zoom event, was canceled. For two decades, I’d encouraged his writing, so I was looking forward to the occasion.  Twelve years my junior, I knew my

May marks the 12th anniversary of publishing this blog.  Thank you, readers, for staying with me.  It also marks 11 years of producing the book talk show, Just Read It.  Who knew that together we had such staying power?  In June, look for the unveiling of the book cover for my mem

The older I get, the more I fall behind the modern culture.  For example, while taping a Just Read It segment on Colm Toibin’s fictionalized biography of Thomas Mann, I was stunned to learn that one of my young guests knew little about one of the twentieth century’s greatest

A discussion of The Lincoln Highway, a novel by Amor Towles, will air this fall on Just Read It. It’s part of the 10th anniversary of the book talk show.  Two local writers will be with me to celebrate and review the novel. Earlier, they joined me for a discussion of Towles’, A G

“I still don’t have what I want,” says Rita Moreno, star of stage, screen, and television and also a winner of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, an Oscar, and a Kennedy Center Honor recipient. (“The Queen,” by Erik Maza, Town&Country, March 2022, pg. 84.) I understood w

Lily Tomlin once said, “I always wanted to be someone, but now I realize I should have been more specific.” I know the feeling.  Nearly ten years have passed since writer Susan Stoner and I began the book talk show, Just Read It. I had dreams of becoming the next Bill Moyers. How

“We are a storytelling species, every bit as much as a tool-using one,” writes the author of The English Professor Who Foresaw Modern Neuroscience.   I agree. As a teacher, I would tell my students, “If you want to see how your mind works, write something.”  Composition exp