"This is a tiny book with a huge heart, about a man—Captain Kidd—who in 1870 is hired to transport a young girl across Texas and return her to her relatives, after she is released by the Kiowa, who had abducted her several years earlier during a raid on a white settlement. The girl at this point has little grasp of English, let alone the ways of the white world, and this makes for a narrative that is in turns funny, moving, and tense, as the two set off on a three-week journey fraught with deepening peril."

"May I cheat and add "The Odyssey" and count them as one? I had an invaluable and inspiring high school teacher, Robert Cooley, who introduced me to both “The Iliad” and “The Odyssey” during my senior year. It was my first experience with the power of drama and poetry combined. Little did I know that I would spend the rest of my life (especially professionally) searching for experiences that would be as satisfying. The fact that I fell in love for the first time with the guy sitting next to me didn’t hurt my journey through those books either."

"This film traces the evolution of flamenco, from its origins in India through Egypt, through eastern Europe to the west – “latcho drom” means safe journey. The director is Romany himself, and there’s no narrator, so the story is told through song and subtitles with no contrivance at all. You feel properly immersed in new worlds as a result – I play flamenco, and you feel the echoes of ancient traditions in it, but this is something else. The most powerful scene is of three women singing on a hilltop about how they’ve been disenfranchised. It’s unbelievably moving."