Human society - global exploration/establishment of trade routes and, more recently, cell phones
Human life - penecillin and, more recently, the Human Genome Project
Human nature - gunpowder and, more recently, uranium

These are some of the books I read over and over again...

The end of the affair - Graham Greene
Pride and prejudice - Jane Austen
The bridge of San Luis Rey - Thornton Wilder
The eyes of the dragon - Stephen King
Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery

I love different authors for different reasons, and I think that as I get older my tastes have changed, but I still like to go back to my old favorites. The author whose voice speaks to me the most is Anne Lamott; I have been gobbling her books up, fiction and nonfiction, since I first read her Bird...

Try Susan Cooper's Dark is Rising series, it's a 5 book series with a mid-20th century twist on the King Arthur story. Really creative and amazing with the fantasy elements your son/nephew will enjoy.

I took a fantasy literature class in college that gave us some formulae for fantasy writing... 1) A hero with a secret power, a special birth mark or long lost royal heritage 2) An object with power that the hero was meant to weild 3) A villian who is seeking to destroy the hero 4) A quest or journe...

One of the highlights of my life was going to the "Eagle and Child" tavern in Oxford, England for a beer with my parents, brother, sister and grand parents. The locals say it was one of Tolkien's, Lewis', and TS Eliot's favorite hangouts. The locals call it "the Bird and Baby", a...

Amelie is a gorgeous film, I agree. Not sure if this is indie but "Spring Forward" with Liev Schreiber and Ned Beattie was a small but incredible flick... a quiet understated story with two very cool guys swapping life philosophies and becoming better people for it.

I thought both No country for Old Men and There will be Blood were two strangely ultraviolent movies to be picked by the academy this year, and I fast forwarded most of both movies because of the violence but I have a couple things to say in Old Men's defense. One - funniest one liner I have heard i...

I use Snopes.com on a lot of the email forwards I get, mostly for a laugh because they are almost always false... I am always wary of articles like this one that describe things in absolutes and seem happy to promote an atmosphere of distrust, hatred and paranoia.

In an episode of the tv show Angel, the main character decends an elevator to "hell" and when it reaches the bottom and opens, he steps out into a street in LA. I'm most prone to agree with that interpretation of hell, it seems like there is not much worse that can be done to us that we do...