There are no books actually on the night stand — just a clock, lamp and photo of my daughters. But beside it is a wobbly pile of 21 volumes (I just counted), and a smaller tower of almost as many again. Each summer I rent a house in a village in the foothills of the White Mountains in Crete. There is one bougainvillea-shaded taverna, which shares the village square with a tiny Byzantine chapel, decorated with magnificent 14th-century frescoes. I sent Alice fan mail to say so, and we ended up on the phone for an hour talking about medieval beards.

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Persons: Karl Ove Knausgaard’s “, ” There’s, Jack Reachers, Thucydides, Walter de la, Kostas, Alice Winn’s, “, ”, Alice Locations: Peloponnesian, Crete