I have a new dream - to spend a year in the wild doing nothing but watching birds as the seasons turn. It's been done before, of course, but it appeals to me greatly, especially as described by Henry Beston in The Outermost House. Henry Beston did not...

A few weeks ago I saw I and I: Bob Marley, a biography for young readers written in verse by and thought that it was a novel idea to write a biography as a collection of first person poems. Now, looking at the new books shelf in the children's...

Ruth Reichl has written several food-related memoirs that include "Mim tales," humorous stories about her mother Miriam Reichl. Writing these after her mother's death, she has regretted that they presented only one side of Mim's character - one that...

Various experts estimate that at least 800,000 and maybe over a million people lost their lives in the chaotic weeks of the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. No one in the country was untouched by tragedy, and the longing for justice is high. At one point the...

I have always enjoyed weeding library collections because they always look so much better after the work is done. Tattered volumes disappear and there is room to shelve more books. Even more important, out of date materials are gone. Some librarians (I...