Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library

Wiley Cash has a gift for storytelling! In his first novel, A Land More Kind Than Home, Cash tells the story of how an evangelical pastor and his church affect a community in the mountains of North Carolina.  The novel, about faith, trust and the questioning of long held beliefs, is told from the points of view of a little boy, an old woman and the local sheriff.  Complete with snake handlers and a mystery surrounding the death of a child, reading this novel is like sitting on a front porch and listening to your little brother, your grandmother or your father tell a story.

In an effort, gentle reader, to have something to discuss with my junior year high school crush, I did something any shy, but sensible bibliophilic 16 year-old would do:  I mimicked his reading habits. First, there were the war-torn stories of The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien, which he toted in a clear plastic backpack. Next, it was Yusef Komonyakaa’s brilliant Dien Cai Dau, which made me crazy, too — over Komonyakaa that is. (“Dien cai dau” means "crazy in the head" in Vietnamese). And while these two works have significantly influenced the way I appreciate literature, it wasn’t until I saw my crush reading Vladamir Nabokov’s Lolita that my (puppy) love for him was eventually replaced by my (very real, very long-lasting) love for Nabokov.

No book has moved me in simultaneous states of obstreperous laughter, deep sympathy, and utter revulsion as masterfully as Lolita. The writing is unarguably good—beautiful, even. The subject matter is profoundly repulsive. Indeed, it is the perverse central theme of the book that makes Plato’s indictment against poetry quite relevant: Stripped of its airs, Lolita, peppered with fancy-pants literary allusions, is nothing more than a book about a pathetic murderer and his bizarre penchant for a 12-year-old girl.

On June 26, 2012, readers and filmgoers everywhere lost a sparkling talent with the passing of Nora Ephron.  Her works, however, live on.  She was born in Manhattan on June 19, 1941 to two screenwriters.  She and her three younger sisters--Delia, Amy, and Hallie--became writers.  As a writer wielding the disarming weapon of humor, Ephron seemed ageless.