Back on the books beat

I'm happy to be back in this space.

When I was first hired as book editor, following the late Harriet Doar, a blue haze of cigarette smoke suffused the newsroom, and typewriters clattered away. No one had ever heard of Google.

That was 1975, and for the next 17 years, I wrote about books and authors. In 1992, I took over Polly Paddock’s metro column and she edited the book page.

The only thing that hasn't changed since 1975 is my love of books, which I'll be writing about every other week in this space and on my blog.

Recent good reads: Claire Messud’s novel “The Woman Upstairs,” Molly Haskell’s memoir about her brother’s sex change, “My Brother, My Sister,” and UNC-Wilmington Janet Ellerbe’s “Following the Tambourine Man: A Birth Mother’s Memoir.”

I wanted to lick the pages of Robert Caro’s fascinating “The Passage of Power: The Years of LBJ.”

I’m immersed in three advance review copies of memoirs: “Under Magnolias” by Frances Mayes of Hillsborough, “The Only Sounds We Make,” by Lee Zacharias of Greensboro, and “My Shining Hour” by Wilson County native Louise Shivers of Augusta, Ga.

Roger Angell charmed me with his “Life in the Nineties” (The New Yorker, Feb. 17, 2014).

I drive two grandkid carpools so audio books are a must: Recent excellent historical fiction: “The Good Wife,” (about Ernest Hemingway), “Loving Frank” (about Frank Lloyd Wright) and “Sarah’s Key” (about a French family during the Holocaust).

Poetry? For me, that’s a daily fix -- on the Web (How a Poem Happens: Contemporary Poets Discuss the Making of a Poem, in individual collections and in journals. (Field, Georgia Review, Poetry, Ploughshares, among them.)

A favorite poet, New York’s Joshua Mehigan, will read in Queens University’s Ketner Auditorium at 8 p.m. on March 27. Don’t miss him.

A favorite novelist and historian, Hendersonville native Robert Morgan, will speak at 8 p.m., March 26, at the Hilton Garden Inn in Pineville. Registration required: 704-889-7145. www.preskjk.com.

Dirty-little-secret reads: Facebook; The community page of the DNA website 23andme.(23andme.com) Recent post: “I grew up an ‘only child’ and discovered 7 years ago that I have 2 sisters. We even went to the same high school.”

More online indulgences: Apartment Therapy, Longreads: The Best Long Form Stories on the Web, and the off-beat humor across the genres at McSweeney’s Internet Tendency.

My favorite places to read: In bed and on trains.

I’ll keep you posted on what’s new, especially from Carolinas authors, what these writers are up to, and who’s reading what and where.

Meanwhile, I’m open to your suggestions.

LBJ biographer Robert Caro coming to Davidson College

Robert Caro, one of the nation's foremost biographers, will speak at Davidson College Feb. 26 as the school's  Joel A. Conarroe lecturer.

Caro has twice won the Pulitzer Prize for biography, for his books on Robert Moses and Lyndon Johnson. "The Passage of Power: The Years of Lyndon Johnson," the fourth volume of his Johnson biography, was published in May.

Caro has also won nearly every other major American literary prize, including the National Book Critics Circle Award  and the National Book Award. President Barack Obama honored him with the National Humanities Medal in 2010.

Caro will deliver Davidson's annual Conarroe lecture at  8 p.m. Feb. 26 in Davidson's Duke Family Performance Hall. The event is free and open to the public, but tickets are required. They'll be available starting Monday, Feb. 4 from the ticket office in Davidson's Alvarez College Union. They can also be reserved online or by phone for a $3 service fee. Check here for more information.