In 2005, the British publishing house of Canongate began producing a series of short novels based on myths from Western and non-Western civilizations. "The Penelopiad" by Margaret Atwood was among a batch of three works that were published simultaneously to inaugurate the series. It's a thin-ish work, running to just 196 pages with a lot of white…

When my daughter saw me reading "The Odyssey," she made a face. Back in high school, I think it was, she had to read it, and hated it. Truth be told, my attempts at reading the book and its predecessor "The Iliad" have pretty much come to naught. All that slogging through archaic language.…

Thomas Berger was born in 1924. He was 40 in 1964 when he published his best-known novel, "Little Big Man," chronicling the early life of Jack Crabb, a white who, at the age of 10, was adopted by a band of Cheyenne and who, over the next quarter-century, ping-ponged back and forth between the white and…

A half century after its publication, Thomas Berger's novel "Little Big Man" is still a fine read, interesting and entertaining. But it doesn't pack the wallop it did back in 1964 when it first hit bookstores. In writing "Little Big Man," Berger broke new ground for a literary novel. His central character, Jack Crabb — born in…

There is so much that is wonderful — and scary — in Richard Rhodes' 1986 history of the creation of nuclear weapons, "The Making of the Atomic Bomb." For me, the single most important sentence is on page 645: "No one should presume to judge these men as they struggled with a future that even…

There is much in this book that's infuriating. I'm not referring to the myriad ways in which the people of the United States (and earlier in the American colonies) have failed to live up to the nation's founding ideals. It is sad and shameful how majorities have oppressed minorities throughout our history. And how…

If Emily Dickinson had had a sense of humor, she might have written "A Girl Named Zippy." And if she'd been born in 1965 in Indiana. That's when and where Haven Kimmel arrived on the planet and spent her childhood in the small (population: 300) town of Mooreland --- the subject of her fun and funny and…

In 1867, the British poet Matthew Arnold published his 37-line lyric poem "Dover Beach," which concludes with this stanza: Ah, love, let us be true To one another! for the world, which seems To lie before us like a land of dreams, So various, so beautiful, so new, Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light, Nor certitude, nor peace, nor…

I don't usually read books like this, collections of smaller pieces. In this case, six essays and 23 literary reviews. I call them "literary reviews" rather than "book reviews" because, in them, Oates examines at least a good chunk — and often the entire breadth — of a writer's work. Her essays deal with the sudden…

Starting to read a new Terry Pratchett novel, for me, has been a different experience since December, 2007. That's when Pratchett announced that he was suffering from early-onset Alzheimer's disease. Each time, I wonder: Is this the book that will show the impact of the disease? Will this be the one that shows the…