How about something different? Rather than recommending a book, let me encourage visitors to this website to read books. The motivation for this change comes from a recent Maureen Dowd column in the New York Times (August 3, 2025). “Books Are Sexy,” Ms. Dowd wrote, adding that a “man staring into a phone is not sexy. But a man with a book has become so rare, such an object of fantasy” that it is arousing. The word she used was “ensorcelling,” a term that I confess sent me to my Webster’s. It means to cast a spell.

I don’t find it sensual or seductive to see someone, male or female, reading a book. But I do find it pleasing. My mom, who taught elementary school until she married (she had to quit at that point because she lived in West Virginia and in those days it was illegal for a married woman to teach), took me to the library when I was about seven years old and checked out a couple of books for me to read. As I recall, one was Black Beauty. Mom thought reading was important and wanted to get me into the habit. Her ploy worked.

Maureen Dowd is particularly concerned that men don’t read fiction. She wrote that eighty percent of all fictional books are purchased by women. I did an online search and learned that more men than women read non-fiction.  

I mostly read non-fiction. I just finished Elaine Pagel’s thought provoking Miracles and Wonder, which contemplates the mysteries of the life of Jesus, and Donald Ryan’s groundbreaking biography of Colonel William Prescott, the often overlooked Revolutionary War officer. I read lots of books about baseball and I recently stumbled onto In Pursuit of Pennants, by Mark L. Armour and Daniel R. Levitt, a fascinating book about how good teams are made and a thousand other aspects of the game.

Mysteries are the works of fiction that I mostly read. My last recommended reading section discussed the books of Peter Colt and Anton Mayer, who write about fictional detectives, and I also devour the crime stories spun by Elmore Leonard and the tales of Harry Bosch in Michael Connelly’s books. I try to read the short stories in each issue of The New Yorker, though I make it through only about one in ten, But if the story was written by Joyce Carol Oates, I guarantee you that I will read every word.  

As you are a visitor to an author’s website, the odds are good that there is no need to encourage you to read. But I will do so anyway, and my advice is to read whatever you wish to read. I just hope that you find it beneficial, whether it was because you enjoyed it, you learned from it, or it made you think.