E M Nathanson

He came, he saw, he hugged. Best-selling author and lecturer Leo Buscaglia, the former USC professor of education who once taught a course on love, appeared at the Round Table West author-luncheon last week at the Balboa Bay Club to discuss his most recent book, "Papa, My Father." But Buscaglia, christened "Dr. Hug" by his fans, could never get through a personal appearance without dispensing a few of his trademark clinches.

Retired Army Col. Aaron Bank, who led a number of daring missions during World War II but was best known for his postwar role in organizing and serving as the first commander of the Army's elite Special Forces, has died. He was 101. Bank, who was known as "the father of the Green Berets," died Thursday of natural causes at his home in an assisted-living facility in Dana Point, said his son-in-law, Bruce Ballantine.

E.M. Nathanson had no intention of writing a sequel to "The Dirty Dozen," his best-selling World War II adventure novel in which OSS Capt. John Reisman leads a group of 12 former Army prisoners behind enemy lines to blow up a chateau full of German generals on the eve of D-Day. "I wanted nothing more to do with John Reisman and the dirty dozen," said the South Laguna writer, whose 1965 novel was made into a hit movie starring Lee Marvin. "The thought of a sequel was appalling to me.

Bookstores are delightful society. If you go into a room filled with books, even without taking them down from their shelves, they seem to speak to you, to welcome you. --William Gladstone, 19th-Century British prime minister Books have been pretty good friends, haven't they? And it's amazing, after the way we've treated them. They've survived our dalliances with radio and movies and television and, now, home video.

It's been a year in which a San Juan Capistrano incest victim wrote about the dark family secret she had kept hidden for four decades, a Lake Forest woman chronicled the enduring popularity of "The Sound of Music," and a retired Irvine history professor eloquently described regaining his sight after years of blindness. It was also a year in which Orange County lost one of its brightest literary lights, the county's best-known author had his fifth suspense thriller in a row reach the No.

As the recipient of the UC Irvine Friends of the Library's first Fiction Award in 1966, E.M. (Mick) Nathanson of Laguna Niguel jokes that "I was the only one around, so they grabbed me." Actually, 17 books were submitted in three categories--fiction, nonfiction and juvenile--the first year the library support group honored county authors. And it was Nathanson's novel, "The Dirty Dozen," that the Friends deemed "the most outstanding" in the fiction category.