Michael Dirda

Long ago, I realized that my only talent — aside from the rugged good looks, of course, and the strange power I hold over elderly women — can be reduced to a single word: doggedness.

Back in the 1950s and '60s, J. M. Barrie's 'Peter Pan' — starring Mary Martin and Cyril Ritchard — was regularly aired on network television during the Christmas season. I must have seen it four or five times and remember, in particular, Ritchard's gloriously camp interpretation of Captain Hook.

While Napoleon believed his fortunes to be governed by destiny, his real genius lay in self-control and martial daring coupled with an indomitable will to power.

A job should bring enough for a worker and family to live on, but after that, self-realization, the exercise of one's gifts and talents, is what truly matters.

My urge at Christmas time or Hanukkah-time or Kwanzaa-time is that people go to bookstores: that they walk around bookstores and look at the shelves. Go to look for authors that they've loved in the past and see what else those authors have written.

For those of us with an inward turn of mind, which is another name for melancholy introspection, the beginning of a new year inevitably leads to thoughts about both the future and the past.

For years, I meant to read 'Arabian Sands', Wilfred Thesiger's account of two punishing camel journeys during the late 1940s across Southern Arabia's Empty Quarter. Now that I have, I can sheepishly join the chorus of those who revere the book as one of the half dozen greatest works of modern English travel writing.

With any luck, Heaven itself will resemble a vast used bookstore, with a really good cafe in one corner, serving dark beer and kielbasa to keep up one's strength while browsing, and all around will be the kind of angels usually found in Victoria's Secret catalogs.

Like most people, I find watching the lazy and quiet underwater realm of a big aquarium exceptionally calming.