The Coptic Gospels

intercolonially 4 of 7 books I love. My Coptic wedding Bible, bequeathed me on converting and marrying in St. Mary’s Coptic Church on Zamalek by my Abuna Yousef. I always tell the story of Yousef anointing and baptising me in the church’s crypt. During a perfunctory catechism class we got to like each other and I […]

Prelude to Love by Brooke Carpenter

5 of 7 books I love: A Greenwich Village Romance. Inscribed by Jim Gardner, writing as Brooke Carpenter (NY: Kim Publishing Co., 1978) a.k.a. Love In A Mist – “It’s better to have loved in a mist than never to have loved at all.” Pg. 7 – “Gazing out the window into Manhattan, Valery found […]

Morte D’Urban

6 of 7 books I love. Save a very few literary Minnesotans, I don’t expect many FBers to know this novel, reissued by NYRB, won the National Book Award in 1963. It’s set, as was Mr. Powers, in the environs of St. John’s, the Benedictine college and monastery midpoint between my mother’s and father’s towns […]