Books Archive

Seamus Heaney - Seamus Heaney had the Irish gift --- the gift of bullshit --- but he didn’t use words for self-glorification. He was that rare event: a great writer, a great man.

Seamus Heaney: Blackberry-Picking - To read my appreciation of Seamus Heaney on Butler, click here. To buy the paperback of his Selected Poems, click here. To buy the Kindle edition of his Selected Poems, click here. Late

Season of Life: A Football Star, a Boy, a Journey to Manhood - This is the ritual for Gilman School football players before each game: Coach Joe Ehrmann: "What is our job as coaches?" Players: "To love us." Ehrmann: "What is your job?" Players: "To love one another." Creepy, huh? At

Second Helpings of Roast Chicken -

Second Sight - You're a young doctor, just six months into your psychiatric practice. And here, out of the blue, comes a dream about a patient: wandering down streets, alone, lost,

Secret Hotels: Extraordinary Values in the World’s Most Stunning Destinations - You can't get a room during peak season at a resort for $1,500 a night --- the rich took them all long ago. So what can you get for less

Secret Ingredients: The New Yorker Book of Food and Drink - The best book A.J. Liebling wrote is Between Meals. He had it right. If you like food --- cooking, eating, thinking about cooking and eating --- there are three times

Secret Venice - Four of the prettiest words I know: Venice in the winter. But it’s cold. Yes, it is. We were there the week after Christmas, and at evening concerts held in churches,

See you in September? Yes, but I leave these for you - SHOPPING ON AMAZON: The business model of this site is Amazon. You start here, buy something there, Butler gets a commission. And not just on the item reviewed. Anything you

Self-Care: What the President Didn’t Say - Depending on where you sit, President Obama’s speech about health care was either a long-overdue line in the sand or, as the Congressman from South Carolina would have it, a

Setting the Table: The Transforming Power of Hospitality in Business - You may have seen this news: In the last month, more than 4 million Americans --- including a million in the service and hospitality industries --- left their jobs.

Sex at Dawn: How We Mate, Why We Stray, and What It Means for Modern Relationships - At some point, you may have been high enough or drunk enough or just clear enough to be struck by a radical insight: We don’t have to pray to go

Shah of Shahs - Between a tyrant and a religious fanatic, who’s worse? When the Shah of Iran was overthrown, four decades ago, we might have said it was the Shah. But for all

Sharon Olds: Stag’s Leap - In 2012, Sharon Olds won the T.S. Eliot Prize for this book. Then she won the Pulitzer. Now she's won the Wallace Stevens award, which isn't small --- in addition

Sharon Olds: Strike Sparks - Her father is dying, and her plane's been cancelled, but there's another, leaving in just a few minutes, not in this terminal, but it will get her to

She Matters: A Life in Friendships - It used to bug me how, at a certain point at parties, half a dozen of the most interesting women would get up and stroll to the ladies room. Their reason,

Shel Silverstein - TIME MACHINE: Today is the last day of school for the child. Her summer reading list: thick books she can read on her own. Once upon a time, this was

Shikasta - Doris Lessing, a novelist "who swept away convention," died a few days ago. Bad me: I've never read her. Guest Butler Stephen Mo Hanan reads everything. But then, he's a

Shining City - A few years ago, I had a rare experience: I read a contemporary novel I wish I'd written. I knew from the very first two sentences: Julian Ripps was too fat

Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery” — The Authorized Graphic Adaptation - Shirley Jackson’s short story "The Lottery" was published in The New Yorker 75 years ago, in the issue of June 26, 1948. It caused an immediate sensation. Some readers wrote