I’ve said that books are friends that move with you and I’ve got a few that have done that for years. From high school to college, to the Air Force, then marriage and apartment to house, about 100 stories have followed me around the country in boxes and trunks. My husband swears they’ll get packed into my coffin. That’s fine with me. I can spend an eternity with M*A*S*H. Okay, for anyone w...
There’s something wonderful about discovering a new book. It makes you feel like you have this great, golden, wonderful secret and you want to run up hill and down dale spilling the news. At least it’s that way for me. Nellie Forbush can sing all she wants about her wonderful guy but I need to start a parade: I’ve found a wonderful book. If you have children, go get this one be...
Both psychiatry and religion care about the human spirit. I know they have seemed like enemies at times and I doubt if the extremists in either practice trust the other but trust has never been high on any extremist’s list, so that’s not a fair comparison. No, at their best, I believe both practices have overlapping interests but by tradition, they’ve rarely worked together. In The Road Less Traveled,...
I saw Fannie Flagg when I was young. Not as young as my husband, (who remembers her stint as the local weather girl) but in the early 1970’s, when Nixon was still president, my family got to see her on stage in a road-company performance of “Mame” with Bea Arthur supporting her as Vera Charles. It was a night of transcendent joy. Mame is a terrific show and Fannie took over the lead as if it had been ...
I am not a Narnia nerd. When my sister and I were young and used to arguing about everything we would debate the literary merits of C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien’s fantasy novels. It was a war of worlds and words, the Chronicles of Narnia v. The Lord of The Rings. (The things sisters argue about!) Without angering the full and affectionate hearts of Mr. Lewis’s supporters (including my sister...