Summer Reading

Finally! Summer Reading! What if you could read something this summer that would transport you far far away from the problems of our day and into a world rich with action, adventure, romance, comedy, and real wisdom coming at you from all sides? What if a super fun read could deepen your worldview, help you with your thoughts and emotions, and prepare you better for everything life brings your way? Not many books will do all that, but one fictional series will: Walid and the Mysteries of Phi.

The books came to me like a movie in my mental theater, surround sound and all. Now, they're my favorite thing I've ever done as a philosopher. Set in Egypt in 1934and 1935, they're a magic carpet ride to a new source of optimism and hope, which is actually the oldest source of all.

One of my favorite contemporary philosophers, who works in the areas of physics and cosmology, has said that reading these books gave him a “palpable sense of goodness” and restored to his life some of the magic that had long been missing. Other readers have compared the novels to Indiana Jones and Harry Potter and Lawrence of Arabia meeting Plato and Aristotle. A few have invoked The Alchemist and The Little Prince. I always smile with gratitude. But they’re really different, a one of a kind ride, and will give you a story that may last in your heart and mind for the rest of your life.

Please try some of these books and let me know what you think. To look at them and snag some easily, go to www.TomVMorris.com/novels/ or visit TheOasisWithin.com. The book The Oasis Within is a short prologue or prelude to the series. And then, the door gets blown open for the swirl of story and adventure. I hope you can have the experience and then tell me about it.

The Three Musketeers

Wonderful! Amazing! Incredible! Why did I not read this book DECADES ago?

I just finished a first reading of Alexander Dumas' great book The Three Musketeers. And as I read the last word on page 700, I was like the early young Harry Potter readers who wished the book could be twice as long! Friendship. Honor. Courage. Intrigue. The Unknown. Strategy. Unsheathe your swords, my friends! All for One and One for All!

In this story of nonstop action and insights into human nature, you'll be astonished at how well political machinations and tactical deceptions are portrayed. As a reader, you'll come away armed in a new way against the devious schemes of others. In fact, toward the end of the book, we find almost a novel within the novel depicting what may be the greatest villain I've ever come across, and this embodiment of evil is a woman with every physical and spiritual advantage apart from goodness. What burns within her soul makes her powerful beyond anyone's expectation. And you come to wonder whether she can ever be defeated.

The greatest wisdom of the book is in the story's many insights about dealing with Machiavellian characters. How do you protect yourself? How do you prevail? First, with friends, partners, confidants you can trust. And second, well, read the book to find out. I think of it as vastly superior to the thin swill too often published nowadays on navigating the difficulties of a sometimes harsh corporate culture.

Throughout the book there are nuggets of insight to spark your own thinking. I'll append a few below. My pagination is from the Barnes and Noble Classics Edition.

Of one thing I must warn you. Be careful in your comments, here, friends, for one untoward word or careless gesture may require the response demanded by the honor of a gentleman. En Guarde!

For the book, click HERE.

Some sample passages:

Obstacles

A weak obstacle is sometimes sufficient to overthrow a great design. (20)

Fragility

 “I was just reflecting on the rapidity with which the blessings of this world leave us.” (337)

Difficulty

“That is rather difficult, but the merit of all things consists in the difficulty.” (338)

“Eh, gentlemen, let us recon upon accidents! Life is a chapelet of little miseries which the philosopher counts with a smile. Be philosophers, as I am, gentlemen; sit down at the table and let us drink.” (526)

Fortune

“Fortune is a courtesan; favorable yesterday, she may turn her back tomorrow.” (410)

Opportunity

“Time, dear friend, time brings round opportunity; opportunity is the martingale of man. The more we have ventured, the more we gain, when we know how to wait.” (465)

 Philosophers

“But then, philosopher that you are,” said D’Artagnan, “instruct me, support me. I stand in need of being taught and consoled.” (325)

Advice

“People in general,” he said, “only ask advice not to follow it; or if they do follow it, it is for the sake of having someone to blame for having given it.” (387)

Grandiose Ambition

“I am at the age of extravagant hope, monseigneur,” said D’Artagnan. “There are no extravagant hopes but for fools, monsieur, and you are a man of understanding.” (441)

On Too Many Public Speakers

He not only talked much, but he talked loudly, little caring, we must render him that justice, whether anybody listened to him or not. He talked for the pleasure of talking and for the pleasure of hearing himself talk. (91)

A Dose of Goodness

I just finished reading Willa Cather's novel, My Antonia for the first time. It's rare that I close a book with tears in my eyes and a lump in my throat. The story, first published in 1918, is about a group of friends and neighbors in a small farming community in the Nebraska prairie during the nineteenth century. But more that that, it's a book about the beauties, wonders, sorrows, and transporting, transient joys of life that, paradoxically, can form us forever.

In our time of public ugliness and strife, it's nearly magical to be transported to a simpler time and place, and welcomed into lives that can remind us all of the most elemental possibilities for goodness in the world.

For the novel, click https://amzn.to/2CWjcuo

A Reflection on my Novels and What They Reveal

I’m editing the final book in my series of philosophical fiction, set in Egypt in 1934 and 1935. As I’ve said here many times, the stories simply came to me as a mental movie, playing in my mind’s eye and ear for five years, with all the dialogue and details already there. The story chose me to tell it. It was out of the blue. My job was just to write what I was seeing and hearing.

And yet, somehow, mysteriously, the books are all about me. I hope they’re also all about you. But I just came to realize that they’re about my deepest hopes and dreams and values and aspirations. They’re about my fears and joys and uncertainties and suspicions. They’re about weakness and strength, wisdom and virtue, friendship and animosity, uncertainty and hope, life and death.

The stories are all quite particular, but the lessons are universal.

And I’m bringing these tales into the world very differently from the vast majority of my books. Instead of contracting as I have for my nonfiction books with a Doubleday or Penguin to publish many tens of thousands of copies and place them into bookstores nationwide, announcing them in big circulation newspapers and magazines, as well as on radio and television, I created my own imprint, found the right people to help in this endeavor of love, and have published them in the new format of print on demand for paperback and hardcover, with the two basic ebook formats also available. That has allowed for something I’ve never been able to do before.

First, I have total control of what goes into print, including the great cover art done by my daughter. And there is something else. After the prologue to the series, The Oasis Within, was available for about the first six months, I realized I wanted to re-edit it. And I was able to, right then. I didn’t have to wait years, until 20,000 or 50,000 copies of the original edition had sold and that many people had bought less than the best I could do. I could make the improvements right away. And the same thing happened with The Golden Palace. Less than a year into its life, it got a new paragraph on the first page, and dozens of small changes throughout that enhanced it immensely. I had never been able to do that with a book before. And as readers have written me about their experience with these novels, their insights have helped me in editing subsequent books. There has been a feedback loop I’ve never had before. And it’s made the books better. This should be a universal experience for writers and readers.

The one problem is that I don’t have a national promotion and marketing machine behind these books. So they have to find their readers on their own. And they are, but very slowly. My workout partner told me today that he just finished The Mysterious Village and really loved it. I was so glad to hear and told him that he’s probably the fourth person to get that far in the series! I was exaggerating a little. But just a little. It will have been worth the seven years of work so far, and the rest of the eight years I anticipate, for them to have a few great readers whose lives are enhanced and maybe even transformed by the stories. And of course, it would be even more gratifying to see even more people enjoying and using the books for the renaissance of understanding about wisdom and virtue, life and death, that they can potentially provide. They’re about success and failure, struggle and victory, defeat and persistence, and the power of committed partnerships along the way. They’re about leadership and love, and staying on your path even when it’s hard, and giving others what they need as you also discover your own deepest needs and gifts. The stories are about so much. And they reveal so much.

In all my philosophy, business, and life nonfiction books, I tell stories from my own experience. You get to know my kids, my wife, as well as friends and neighbors and both the silly things and the deeper things that I’ve encountered along the way. And in the novels, there are no stories about my life. Yet, somehow, they’re the most autobiographical of anything I’ve ever done, the most deeply revealing, and if I had written nothing else ever, I would want to leave them for my kids, and grandkids, and anyone who might be interested in the experience of a philosopher meandering from the mid twentieth century into these first days of the twenty-first, and trying to get his bearings for making the world a slightly better place with the ancient wisdom that’s exactly what we need now.

For the series, go to www.TheOasisWithin.com.

The Novel, Little Women

I just read a wonderful book that I want to recommend to you all, one that I might never have tried, were it not for an upcoming Masterpiece Theater series scheduled to begin in May on PBS. And it has reconfirmed my view that some of the best reading business people can do is not to be found in business books.

In an age of dystopian novels, and stories about deeply damaged and disturbed people doing awful things, it's a breath of fresh air to read a book about good people growing to be even better. And that's exactly what I've been writing in my own recent Egyptian novels, swimming hard against the contemporary tide with all my might. For a long time, we've heard that it's much easier to write about evil than good. But I've not found that to be true, and I would suppose that neither did the author Louisa May Alcott, as she composed her glorious epic story, Little Women. I just read the beautiful Puffin edition designed by family friend Anna Bond, founder of the wonderful Rifle Paper Company.

In the world of business, we need to understand the people around us. What motivates them? What bothers them? What are their ambitions, and their secret sufferings? How can we best deal with the various personalities of our colleagues and clients? Sometimes, a good novel can provide perspectives on these issues like nothing else. I came away from Little Women refreshed, energized, inspired, and wiser than when I began to read it.

Do yourself a favor. Get yourself a copy and read the 777 pages of this book (No worries: Big Print) for its deep wisdom, homey ethos, and incredibly inspiring philosophy. Just click the link below, or visit your local library. Some of the best philosophers of the nineteenth century were women who wrote novels, not philosophical treatises, and taught us a lot more about life than their male counterparts of the era. You'll love this book.

Little Women: https://amzn.to/2qzIjuj

Resurrection

I just realized on this Easter Weekend that I’ve been writing about resurrection for seven years without realizing I was doing so.

Our word comes from Latin roots, from a verb that meant to rise again or arise anew. Since February of 2011, I’ve been writing and editing a story about a boy and his friends in a reimagined Egypt in 1934 and 1935. As the story played out like a vivid movie in my spirit, I gradually learned that the story is about the power of the mind, the depth of the human spirit, the strength of love, the nature of true friendship, the vital importance of wisdom in everything we do, and the many contours of goodness. It's also about the special abilities we all have available to us that we too rarely experience. What I didn’t realize was that perhaps resurrection is the main thread around which all the others are woven.

Can a boy rise anew from the life of an ordinary child in a small village to serve his kingdom as a prince? Can a nation rise from the ashes of turmoil and great political damage to a new and better life? But finally, and most importantly, is a moral and spiritual resurrection possible within the confines of this life or beyond for a individual whose journey has been corrupted by decades of wrong choices and motivations?

As a Christian, I celebrate a unique resurrection this weekend. But as the best theologians of my tradition have long pointed out, the myth of resurrection has long been present in the human spirit, across cultures, and throughout history. The distinctive Christian claim is that at one particular place and time, and in a distinct individual from another small village, the myth was finally embodied and made real at a new level, for the benefit of us all.

The idea reverberates through all of life. In the world of vegetation, there is death and then revival. In our careers in the world, we’re sometimes like the fantastical Phoenix, who goes down in flames and rises afresh from the ashes. We want to believe in radical and positive transformation. But is it really possible? I think it is. And that’s an implication of the message of Easter, when a tragic death brings new and transformed life. I see now that I’ve been writing about it without realizing I was doing so for the past seven years—its possibility and hope and reality.

My Easter wish is that we all experience that possibility and hope and reality anew in this special season and throughout the days to come.

A Work of Hope

Most businesses cater to either our realized needs, our desires, or our fantasies. And of course, these three categories are connected in various ways. Some businesses cater to our fears, and a few, to our hopes. Commentators have told me over the years that one reason my talks and books are successful is that they bring people hope. They display the wisdom we need to spark and ground our hopes for a better future. And today, I've realized for the first time that this may also be true of the new novels I've been writing.

I've enjoyed or benefited from various types of dystopian literature at times in my life - from Orwell's books to The Handmaid's Tale to The Hunger Games and the Divergent series. And in troubled times, people often turn to such books as needed cautionary tales, and as instructive explorations into the dark side of human nature. After the Arab Spring of 2010 and 2011 worked out so badly, at least in the short run, writers in North Africa began a sudden turn toward darkness in their own poems and fiction. I certainly understand that. But there's a big part of me sensing now that what we most need in turbulent times is a literature of hope, well grounded, thoughtful, responsible hope. And as I deepen in that realization, I come to see that this is exactly what I've been writing and editing for the past six years—an epic adventure series of books, set in Egypt in 1934 and 1935, that explores the best in our nature as it responds to the worst. Issues of courage, friendship, love, and the power of the mind weave through the books and cumulatively create the elements of a very powerful worldview, anchored in ancient thought and yet responsive to the best of modern science. Without realizing what I've been doing—other than writing as fast as I could to get onto the computer a vivid movie I was seeing in my head each day—I was bringing into the world precisely the sort of literature I think we now most need, in our nation and globally. And that gives me a new sense of excitement and personal adventure about continuing to bring these novels into print for their growing audience. After being told by my agents repeatedly that I'm a nonfiction writer, not a fiction guy, even without looking at the fiction, I decided to create my own imprint and a business to bring these new books into existence in our time. And a new publishing imprint unconnected from the major New York houses that I've worked through in the past gets no publicity, but then provides many distinctive gratifications. And, again, as I've said here before, I deeply appreciate those of you who are reading and writing me your impressions of these books. May we together launch something very new into our time. www.TheOasisWithin.com

My Favorite Book. Ever.

Yesterday, in a magazine interview over the phone, the writer asked me, “What’s your favorite book?” I actually get asked that a lot and never before knew what to say. I have lots of favorites. But I just may have discovered my favorite novel of all time and perhaps even my single favorite book, excluding of course, The Bible, which should never be a part of such comparisons in the first place, for several reasons. And I’ve learned that my new favorite book is considered a classic, though I’ve never heard of it before. It looks like a book for children, and in particular, for little girls. But it’s out now in a beautiful edition that the former little girl in our home had owned for years. Anna Bond, a family friend at Rifle Paper Company in Winter Park, Florida designed the new cover. Look them up if you don’t know their amazing work.

Anyway, the book is A Little Princess, by Frances Hobson Burnett, and was first published in 1905. It portrays the unlikely adventures of a young girl in London who, after living a charmed first stretch of life, is thrust into challenging, bleak and difficult circumstances beyond anything she could have anticipated. And yet, she uses the amazing power of the imagination, and the equally great power of good manners, and ultimately true kindness, to prevail over all. It’s one of the best books I’ve ever come across on inner resilience and the power of the mind. It’s charming, and even heartwarming, but most of all, it’s deeply wise.

Let me give you a sample, although excerpts can’t really convey the impact of the expertly told story, whose lessons often come through in subtle ways. In one scene, the headmistress of her school, Miss Minchin, speaks to young Sara, the elegant princess of our title, with great harshness, heaping on untrue and unfair accusations, while Sara listens without any sign of anger, hurt, agitation, or reply. She then muses over her own restraint, and especially on the fact that, unlike most people, she doesn’t answer the unjust accusations.

"As to answering, though," said Sara, trying to console herself, "I don't answer very often. I never answer when I can help it. When people are insulting you, there is nothing so good for them as not to say a word—just to look at them and THINK. Miss Minchin turns pale with rage when I do it, Miss Amelia looks frightened, and so do the girls. When you will not fly into a passion, people know you are stronger than they are, because you are strong enough to hold in your rage, and they are not, and they say stupid things they wish they hadn't said afterward. There's nothing so strong as rage, except what makes you hold it in—that's stronger. It's a good thing not to answer your enemies. I scarcely ever do. (Puffin Edition, 147)

And another, longer, passage, after a particularly shocking development:

Then a thought came back to her which made the color rise in her cheek and a spark light itself in her eyes. She straightened her thin little body and lifted her head.

 "Whatever comes," she said, "cannot alter one thing. If I am a princess in rags and tatters, I can be a princess inside. It would be easy to be a princess if I were dressed in cloth of gold, but it is a great deal more of a triumph to be one all the time when no one knows it. There was Marie Antoinette when she was in prison and her throne was gone and she had only a black gown on, and her hair was white, and they insulted her and called her Widow Capet. She was a great deal more like a queen then than when she was so gay and everything was so grand. I like her best then. Those howling mobs of people did not frighten her. She was stronger than they were, even when they cut her head off."

 This was not a new thought, but quite an old one, by this time. It had consoled her through many a bitter day, and she had gone about the house with an expression in her face which Miss Minchin could not understand and which was a source of great annoyance to her, as it seemed as if the child were mentally living a life which held her above the rest of the world. It was as if she scarcely heard the rude and acid things said to her; or, if she heard them, did not care for them at all. Sometimes, when she was in the midst of some harsh, domineering speech, Miss Minchin would find the still, unchildish eyes fixed upon her with something like a proud smile in them. At such times she did not know that Sara was saying to herself: "You don't know that you are saying these things to a princess, and that if I chose I could wave my hand and order you to execution. I only spare you because I am a princess, and you are a poor, stupid, unkind, vulgar old thing, and don't know any better."

 This used to interest and amuse her more than anything else; and queer and fanciful as it was, she found comfort in it and it was a good thing for her. While the thought held possession of her, she could not be made rude and malicious by the rudeness and malice of those about her. "A princess must be polite," she said to herself.

 And so when the servants, taking their tone from their mistress, were insolent and ordered her about, she would hold her head erect and reply to them with a quaint civility which often made them stare at her.

 "She's got more airs and graces than if she come from Buckingham Palace, that young one," said the cook, chuckling a little sometimes. "I lose my temper with her often enough, but I will say she never forgets her manners. 'If you please, cook'; 'Will you be so kind, cook?' 'I beg your pardon, cook'; 'May I trouble you, cook?' She drops 'em about the kitchen as if they was nothing." (pages 164-5)

Our Princess thinks of herself as protected by a sort of benevolent magic. She once says, "Somehow, something always happens," she cried, "just before things get to the very worst. It is as if the Magic did it. If I could only just remember that always. The worst thing never QUITE comes." (page 220)

If you treat yourself to this magnificent little book, you’ll be glad, and you'll feel Sara's Magic.

http://amzn.to/2pebli9

The Oasis Within and Self Examination

I'm so grateful to everyone who's been writing me about my short novel, The Oasis Within and the series it begins. I'm getting two sorts of emails: (1) "I wish I had been able to read a book like this years or decades ago" and (2) "This book has come into my life at the perfect time." I'm sure there are also people with the response (3) "This is an extremely odd book for Tom Morris to write," but so far they're not emailing me or posting perplexed reviews on Amazon. Many readers are asking how I ever came to write such novels at all, set as they are in Egypt in 1934 and 1935. 

I've just come to understand the role that relentless, deep, and difficult self examination played in freeing me up for this great adventure. 

If you had asked me ten years ago about my childhood, I would have sincerely said, "It was great." But that was because I was blocking a lot of the real truth, which was that I had an attractive, young, emotionally damaged mother who had been raised in an orphanage and was determined to live out her frustrated ambitions through her only child, who therefore could not possibly please her. Such damage is never confined to one generation. So if, as a child, I brought home less than excellent grades, war ensued—a scorched earth spiritual Aleppo campaign against the loudly delineated deficiencies of a frightened bewildered little six or eight or ten-year-old. And so I lived for decades unaware of the engines of need buried deep in my psyche. Nothing was ever enough. I couldn't write one article, I had to write fifty. I couldn't have one fountain pen. I needed twenty. Imagine how expensive this could get with BMWs. Until I was one day able to face up to the fact that my constant need for achievement, my continual rushing about, my never being satisfied, might all be due to something that desperately needed attention, and perhaps healing. 

Socrates stressed the importance of self-examination, and when I decided to do it relentlessly, and even with a measure of courage and great pain and glimmers of hope, it cleansed me and freed me from so many inner obstacles that I had not been aware existed. 

And then my mental movie started to play. it was showing me in living color and surround sound Dolby X the great lessons of life wisdom that went beyond anything I had ever felt or thought. I met young people in Egypt in 1934 and the adults in their lives, and I fell in love with them to the extent that the criminals and revolutionaries who were their enemies caused me great concern for their safety as I wrote and wrote, typing as fast as I could, while the scenes and stories and insights poured over me—the inner visions that, so far, have resulted in eight novels of over a million words, with the first three now in print: The Oasis Within, The Golden Palace, and The Stone of Giza. And I'm already excited about the next installment just months from now, The Viper and The Storm. But I truly can't wait until the one after that, The King and Prince, that taught me some of the deepest lessons of my life. And still the very deepest is in the last that's now written, a book called The Ancient Scroll. There I learned the most powerful lessons about redemption and personal transformation.

I tell you this short and ultimately happy story in case you may have hidden, deeply buried obstacles in your own psyche that need your attention. A program of honest and relentless self examination may just be the thing to free you for your own next adventure, which as I've experience, can be a joy you could never otherwise have even imagined.

www.TheOasisWithin.com

The Golden Palace, Ideas, and You

I keep getting emails from friends and clients asking me whether The Golden Palace is available yet in print and as an e-book. The answer is YES!

People are having to ask because we've only done a "soft launch" of The Oasis Within and The Golden Palace in the past nine months. That means I haven't been on any national book tour for signings at retail bookstores everywhere, and haven't yet done any national print, radio, or television publicity for the books. My speaking schedule this year just wouldn't allow that, and yet I wanted to get these books in print and available to my circle of philosophy friends and enthusiastic audience members as soon as they were ready. Thus, the soft launch.

These are my favorite books I've ever written. And the early feedback on both books has been amazing! Thank you so much if you've emailed me about these books or posted a comment on Amazon or any other online book site! I've never had such positive feedback for books! It's deeply gratifying. These two books launch a series of at least eight books, now all written and being edited, that are about a 13 year old boy in Egypt in 1934 who is learning some deep life lessons as he accompanies his uncle on a path of action, adventure, mystery, intrigue, and profound and practical philosophical ideas.

In case you haven't yet seen The Golden Palace, let me show you just two recent comments. On Amazon, a prominent American philosopher wrote:

5 Stars! Let the Series Begin! An Amazon Customer.
What would you get if you locked Indiana Jones, Plato, and Obi-Wan Kenobi in a room and asked them to write a rousing tale of intrigue, adventure, wisdom, and suspense? Probably something a lot like this book! A lead-off home run to what promises to be the most exciting series of philosophical novels of our time.

An Australian reader just posted on Twitter these words:

The Golden Palace by @TomVMorris is Philosophy 101, Indiana Jones, and The Da Vinci Code all rolled into one.

It's very nice to be mentioned in such good company! Another philosopher has said,

The Golden Palace is a rich feast, baking the ancient wisdom of Plato and Aristotle into the timeless adventure of Lawrence of Arabia. Tom Morris serves up that wisdom in a coming of age story as contemporary as Harry potter, but with this intriguing twist: the true instrument of magic is not a wand, but the mind.

I wanted to blog about this today because I just finished editing what will be the next book in the series, The Stone of Giza, another tale of intrigue and wisdom, carrying on the adventures of the cast introduced in The Golden Palace. That book should be available in a few months. But the summer is a great time to start in on The Oasis Within if you haven't read that prologue to the series yet, or to get a copy of The Golden Palace, Volume One of the series, if you've already sampled the prologue and are eager to read more.

I'm also meeting with book groups on these books, for the first time ever, so don't hesitate to ask!

A Good, Virtuous Character

The New York Times Book Review recently asked two writers, Thomas Mallon and Alice Gregory, a question about characters in novels that's often been discussed before. It was posed like this: Can a Virtuous Character Be Interesting? The most common, received opinion is that a scoundrel, scalawag, deviant, or miscreant is much more interesting to read about than a normal garden-variety good guy. The argument usually given for such a view is simple. Imagine this story: A guy is born into a great and psychologically healthy family, he grows up around good friends, attends a fine school, is very nice himself, graduates from an ideal college, meets the perfect life partner, and lives happily ever after. It would not be the typical page turner. "Wait. I have to finish this chapter. Somebody just nicely asked our hero to pass the salt and I've got to see what form of graciousness he displays to comply!" 

We're often drawn to flawed characters. For one thing, we may see in them, on full parade, various traits that we've felt in ourselves and rightly suppressed. It's instructive and sometimes even fascinating to witness them fully developed and on display. In a related way, truly despicable characters in fiction make us look not so bad, after all, by contrast - which is surely one of the reasons reality television shows are so popular. And then, in another way, we may enjoy the insight that such portrayals can give us into the souls of people we actually have to deal with now and then outside the realms of novels.

Most good writers can provide long lists of baddies who have been more interesting to read about in the history of literature than almost any of the goodies. But should writers aspire more, and work harder, to depict goodness rather than focusing on so many types of evil?

Alice Gregory has something worthwhile to say about it all. She writes:

A truly radical 21st-century novelist wouldn’t ask us to see ourselves in made-up villains, and then, hopefully, revise our opinions of the real ones in our own lives. Rather, they would ask us to see the arduous and often acrobatic effort that goes into living a life of common decency. They would coerce us into believing that virtue is interesting and fun to think about and far more dazzling to encounter than malevolence.

In her 1947 book “Gravity and Grace,” Simone Weil wrote: “Imaginary evil is romantic and varied; real evil is gloomy, monotonous, barren, boring. Imaginary good is boring; real good is always new, marvelous, intoxicating.”

I think that's well said, both by Gregory and Weil.

I've just finished the most unexpected adventure in writing, over the course of my entire life, A movie started playing in my head one morning about four and a half years ago, and I immediately rushed to write down everything I was seeing and hearing. It was the most amazing process of writing I've ever experienced, and quite different from the rational and heavily planned creation of a nonfiction book of philosophy. The movie kept playing, and an entrancing prologue book, recounting a trip across the desert in Egypt in 1934, quickly came into being, and has been followed by seven subsequent much longer novels, so far. The prologue, The Oasis Within, is a short book just shy of 200 pages, and is going to be announced here soon, as it will be published within the month.

The Oasis Within, and its novel series that follows, are all my favorite books I've ever written. And the main characters are all very good guys. They display everyday virtue in dazzling ways. They do confront evil, and great danger, many times, and in wildly varied forms, but they are themselves great people I'd love to know. And they're the opposite of boring. In fact, they may be the most fascinating characters I've ever been introduced to, in any story. But maybe that's just me. And they confirm richly Alice Gregory's point.

I'll announce it here when the first of the eight books laying out their story is available. It will be very soon. A twenty-first century novelist is about to do something very different. 

Pat Conroy's Novels

I just came across a bunch of Pat Conroy novels on a shelf in my study and stood pondering them, and thought maybe I should write a little something here about him and his books. As we enter the summer season of reading big books on vacation, maybe one of his should accompany you down to the beach, or wherever you go to relax. I mean, of course, along with one of mine. 

I like Pat Conroy a lot. And I like his books. I had the chance to sit and talk with him for quite a while one night, just the two of us, and came away with the feeling that he's a really good guy. I then heard him speak to a big group of people and was really impressed with his talk. He was funny. And moving. Just like his books. Born and raised and educated in the south, he's a man who paid attention growing up and stocked his mind and heart with the stories of this distinctive region that he’s been sharing with the world for many years.  

He wrote his first book while he was still in school, and then followed up with a string of best sellers that continues to this day: 

The Water is Wide – a heroic year of teaching on a small island off the coast of South Carolina, now the basis for two great movies,

The Great Santini – growing up in the home of a fighter pilot, and having to fight for any small measure of independence and dignity while surrounded by violence, prejudice, outrageous demands, and some surprising sides of love,

The Lords of Discipline – the experience of a southern military school: hazing, torture, friendship, self-mastery, hope, betrayal, and honor,

The Prince of Tides – one family’s struggles with tragedy and madness, much of it in the midst of great beauty, along with one man’s attempt at making sense of it all,

Beach Music – the gravitational force of family and how hard it is to achieve escape velocity from place and blood, no matter what you do,  

My Losing Season – where basketball meets the rest of life,

And even a cookbook that people with culinary talents I don’t have say is one of the compelling cookbooks of our day. There are other titles, as well, but those are the ones I know.

Pat Conroy’s themes are as universal as his sense of place is particular: The experience of adversity, the power of friendship, the complex cauldron of family in which we’re all formed, the incredible lure of the low country with its rich display of the wonders of nature, here at the edge of America where I live. You can experience shock and trauma on one page of a Conroy book, and find yourself laughing out loud in the very next chapter.  

Some of the best reading times I’ve ever enjoyed have been in Pat Conroy’s books. I’ve read them even when I really should have been doing other things. I’ve relished every one, and I’ve even taken notes. You see, Pat Conroy is a good philosopher – an astute diagnostician of human nature. But, most of all, he’s a master of stories.

Whenever I’m reading one of his books, I think I appreciate my family and friends a little more, I breathe the fresh salt air of my town a bit more deeply, I linger outside a touch longer to watch water birds move across the sky, and I get really hungry. The descriptions of food in Pat's books are pretty amazing, which is possibly why he had to do a cookbook for us, to help satisfy at least one of the cravings his pages create.

So: Do yourself a favor, and try out one of his books, if you haven't already. Or grab one you haven't read. It's sure to be a great summer read.