Back to books time it is, it is.

Top of the list is Donna Tartt’s novel, The Goldfinch. If I tell you that it begins with a terrorist bombing at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, does that give too much away? Not really, especially since I’ll also let slip that the 13-year-old Theo of the bombing is still alive and well some years later in the prologue.

Rich in detail and language, The Goldfinch is an exquisite piece of writing. Everything you wanted to know about furniture restoration and how to survive as a teen age boy in a completely dysfunctional family in Las Vegas, of all places, is included in the package, along with a delightful supporting cast of Dickensian characters.

Power, Faith, and Fantasy: America in the Middle East, 1776 to the Present, by David Oren; now there’s a mouthful of a title, but oh, does it deliver. Everything you ever wanted to know about the Middle East, from the Barbary pirates to the war in Iraq, is fair game for Oren, who dispenses information through countless anecdotes and factual re-tellings of historic events. As an overview, it’s thorough and engaging, as he details both sides of the inevitable Arab-Jewish conflict with knowledge gained from years of observation and research.

If you want a fictional account of 20th century Barbary pirates, try Laurie King’s Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes novel, The Pirate King, an entertaining look at what happens when the cast of Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Pirates of Penzance is surreptitiously kidnapped and held for ransom by true-to-life pirates.