For those who aren’t following along, I run a small book subscription service called Curious Reading Club. It’s focused on sharing non-fiction books that I’ve enjoyed, often about science, technology, history and society—mostly new (but not always) and with a curveball memoir or handbook thrown in for fun now and then. The books I choose are generally written from a journalistic point of view, and I particularly try to find titles and authors that deserve […]
I’ve been a fan of The Open Notebook for a long time—a great resource for science writers specifically, but full of useful, practical advice for anyone who is trying to share complex information with non-academic audiences. They recently ran a roundtable conversation as “A writer’s guide to being edited”, which is stuffed with information and wisdom. Things I absolutely agree with: talk it through up front, don’t be defensive, think of editing as a conversation—not […]
Writing is many things, and one of them is channeling. As a writer you are a conduit, a crucible. You are a voice, whether you are interrogating your own ideas, bringing life to characters fictional or real, or simply reporting what you have seen so that others can understand. When you write you are often channeling other people directly, and when you are not it is because you are doing it indirectly: building on the […]
Joan Didion, for all her complexities, continues to have… a moment? No, it’s too extended for that. And she was too anxious, too awkward for it. Still, it’s happening: even though she died last year, her words keep coming. Even her stuff keeps coming. I loved this explanation of hers, from a talk (via Lithub) that’s in her book released earlier this year. It’s those obsessions that shape what we are, really. Underneath we’re the […]
Smells are brilliant and infuriating for writers because they are just so hard to express. Here’s an Atlas Obscura piece, an excerpt from Jessica Leigh Hester’s Sewer, describing the waft of fatbergs that clog the pipes beneath London. These moments that overwhelm the senses are fascinating.
•“The poetics of history from below” • Undark on how nudge theory—which was very exciting to the political classes over the last decade—fared during the pandemic • The Office of Collecting and Design • I love Michael Hobbes. Here’s his recent video on cancel culture (re: the last post) • Why the Center on Privacy & Technology is no longer using the term “artificial intelligence”
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