Archive for the ‘ Stuff I'm Reading ’ Category

Lock In, But Not In the Cool Way Like at a Video Arcade

[I've been meaning to post this for a while. I've been hesitating because it feels unfinished, but I now think that's because the central idea is going to need a long time, and many posts, to percolate into anything really coherent. Consider this a disclaimer or an invitation, however you prefer to see it. Sorry [ READ MORE ]

In-flight Reading

… Maybe I’m naive, but I was surprised that T C Boyle’s story in this week’s Harper’s was boring. I’ve heard good things about T C Boyle, and about Harper’s. Combine that with a story titled ‘What Separates Us From The Animals’ and I thought I was in for a sure thing. The reason I treat myself to a foreign [ READ MORE ]

REVIEW ‘Clinching’ by Emmett Stinson

Yesterday afternoon, waiting for an author who was waiting on the other side of the cafe, I had a chance to read ‘Clinching’, a story by Emmett Stinson in the first issue of Kill Your Darlings.1 Emmett, at 30-odd, is on the cusp of SIB’s definition of ‘young writer’, but I’ve been encountering his work since [ READ MORE ]

Youngest Newspaper Publishers Ever?

I got a copy of Harpers Magazine at the airport yesterday. It’s becoming a kind of personal airport tradition: I buy a magazine I wouldn’t normally read and take it with me on the plane, often as my only reading material, so that I’m forced to read it. It’s a good way to learn about a [ READ MORE ]

Dave Eggers is Not a Crusader

Dave Eggers is neither a novelist any longer, nor ‘on a crusade for print journalism …‘ He is publishing an over-priced newspaper. That’s great, and his motives are noble, but he is no more on a crusade for journalism than he is for New Orleans victims, the Lost Boys of Sudan or the many disadvantaged [ READ MORE ]

HTGYST | How To Get Your Shit Together: The art of pulling your socks up

I am currently trying to get my shit together, and the likelihood of it ever happening is feeling increasingly elusive as I try to plan and work at the same time. Meanwhile I’m reading The Land of Plenty by Mark Davis1, which isn’t helping. He’s going on about the ‘prosperity scandal’ and the mythologies that have [ READ MORE ]

Inferiority Complex, Much?

I often read claims like this: So is YA taking over the grown-ups’ table? It’s a revealing question, steeped in the kind of condescension that assumes books aimed at young people are intrinsically of less cultural value than the real books, speculative or otherwise, that are ostensibly for adult readers. It’s also drenched in fear because, [ READ MORE ]

Andre Peach

I’m excited that Andre Dao is blogging at A Portrait of the Peach as a Young Lawyer. I have known Andre since we employed him as the Voiceworks Production Intern at Express Media. He helped me produce a production manual for future Voiceworks editors – actually, I helped him, as he did most of the leg [ READ MORE ]

The Internet Hating On Lee Siegel

So it turns out this Lee Siegel fella might be a total douchebag. He got busted for sockpuppetry at his blog for The New Republic, was hounded out of there and proceeded to get angry about internet anonymity, among other things wrong with the internet, in his book, Against the Machine. That this book is [ READ MORE ]

Lee Siegel Hating On The Internet

I’ve been interested in this guy Lee Siegel lately, since I found his critique of What is the What and the cult subculture that Eggers has spawned with McSweeney’s. This was the first well-considered and in-depth critical review of the whole phenomenon that I had read since feeling awkwardly contrarian in criticising What is the What [ READ MORE ]

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