BOOK BARN

#113: CASTLES IN THE AIR. Years ago, a friend I was traveling with detoured me, on our way to visit Versailles, down a back street to a chocolaterie she knew of, where I purchased a nid au chocolat , a nest-shaped little cake in which rested a bundle of small milk-chocolate eggs. It wasn’t particularly fancy or expensive, but it was made with real skill, and after all these years I remember it with as much pleasure as the overwhelming posh of the chateau and its vast groun

#112: THE FLOW. Of all the classical Greeks, it’s Heraclitus who might most comfortably have sat down to breakfast with the Buddha. ...

#111:  REVISITING THE DOCTOR.  To the modern and liberal sensibility, it must sometimes seem as if Samuel Johnson could hardly open his...