It was the birds that woke me—a chorus of chirps and trills just outside the window despite the dreary morning, their song more chaotic than melodic. I lay still, listening, as the first light of dawn crept through the curtains. A soft weight pressed against my arm: my eldest daughter, who had negotiated her way into my bed the night before with ...

I stumbled onto my old Last.fm profile the other day, and wow—the whiplash. It sent me straight back to being twenty-something, living in a small room at my parents’ house, pretending to be an adult in a new career. Looking back, I think the thing I envy most was all the time I had, even when I was working to make a name for myself. I used to ...

It was a chill, sharp morning in Cappadocia, the sort that pierces bone and rouses even the sleepiest of minds. The hour was scarcely past six when we assembled, my wife and I flanked by our disgruntled progeny, their protests muffled by layers of jackets drawn tight against the cold. The balloon’s basket lay before us like a great wicker sentine...

In the unhurried days of my youth, when mobile technology was only just beginning to dictate the rhythm of our lives, I had the privilege of growing up in a home steeped in books. My parents would often speak of reading as a dance of the imagination, a phrase doubtless intended to guide my burgeoning interests toward pursuits of a higher nature. Wh...

In my early teens, the house was often a quiet tomb of books until my cousins arrived. Three of them would descend regularly, deposited by parents chasing long work hours or errands—a rhythmic abandonment that matched my own family’s schedule. My mother commuted out of the district, and my father was a ghost in the machine of his own job, leavi...