Tonight, an object lesson for students in the age of social media. (Actually, I’m surprised this story has remained ‘off blog’ for so long since my friends are ever-so-happy to hear it told.) In 1999, I worked as a teaching assistant for Michael Lewis while a graduate student at the University of California at Berkeley’s Graduate…
As the nation tried to collect itself in the hours, minutes, and days after the terrorist attacks, our president rightfully spent a great deal of time and energy reassuring the public. What I didn’t believe, though, was the insistence that we could adequately monitor digital communications in order to find out if there were looming threats.
After months and years of research, I’ve finally started outlining So Far Appalachia, my next book project. The early part of the writing process involves organizing my anecdotes, inserting them within chapters, and arranging the chapters in a way that will elicit the reader to consider certain themes. It looks like this:
Of Dice and Men: The Story of Dungeons & Dragons and the People Who Play It by David M. Ewalt My rating: 3 of 5 stars It’s wildly difficult to write a first-person account of a phenomenon. The reason: Authors-as-characters only work when they become surrogates for the reader. Too often writers inject themselves into…
Stasiland: Stories from Behind the Berlin Wall by Anna Funder My rating: 5 of 5 stars My friend Aleks and I are each writing non-fiction stories that involve some form of first-person narrative. It’s a troublesome form, first person, because quite often the narrative gets in the way of the story. Done poorly, it’s a…
We know that the best way for humans to change their behavior patterns is through tracking mechanisms. If you want to lose weight, you have to count (somewhere) what you are eating. If you want to get stronger in the gym, you have to count what you are doing. Without that tracking mechanism, we lose…
It’s Even Worse Than It Looks: How the American Constitutional System Collided With the New Politics of Extremism by Thomas E. Mann My rating: 4 of 5 stars As a writer and former journalist, I’ve always found myself interested in stories about how systems work. It’s one of the most enjoyable aspects of being a…
Untangling the Web: What the internet is doing to you by Aleks Krotoski My rating: 5 of 5 stars As a note of disclosure, Aleks is my friend and so my thoughts on the book will obviously have some bias in them. I’d like to say otherwise, but that simply wouldn’t be true. That said:…
The Age of American Unreason by Susan Jacoby My rating: 3 of 5 stars Susan Jacoby’s book is at its best when she’s weaving together her philosophical take on intellectualism and elitism with failings in modern education, American citizens, and public debate. Unfortunately, she sometimes falls into a sense of “days gone by,” reminiscing about…
I think thematically. As each year comes to a close, I spend December sitting with the work of my previous year. I sift through what I’ve created, I look at what I didn’t create, and conceptualize what I want my next year to become. I’ve always been methodical and particular in my thinking, but I’ve become much…