Blog Posts
Discover a path to greater well-being.
Chad Prevost’s blog offers a compassionate and insightful exploration of personal growth. Through the lens of the Enneagram, you’ll find practical guidance to navigate life’s challenges, unlock your potential, and cultivate a deeper sense of self. Explore a wealth of wisdom-filled posts designed to inspire and empower you.
Open Book: Genesis the Greykid on Art, Business, Expectations, Fear, and Creative Community
https://feeds.captivate.fm/the-humanist/ This episode's conversation revolves around the themes of creativity, vulnerability, and personal growth. Genesis emphasized the importance of practicing vulnerability in creative endeavors, and with Chad Prevost and Ben Cake,...
From Copywriter to Creative Maverick: Unpacking the Journey of Redefining Success and Chasing Authenticity
https://the-humanist.captivate.fm/episode/from-copywriter-to-creative-maverick-unpacking-the-journey-of-redefining-success-and-chasing-authenticity The central focus of the first month's theme for The Humanist podcast is understanding Authenticity. Why? Partly because...
How to Quietly Stand Out with Michael Thompson
https://open.spotify.com/episode/3VCAl3zPbXWbSQ5aDhg3zW?si=15554f2ed6a147e0 Chad Prevost and Michael Thompson discuss Shy by Design, which outlines 12 timeless principles for standing out quietly. Michael shares his journey from stuttering and shyness to embracing his...
From Google to the Forest: Embracing a Future of Radical Optimism
https://open.spotify.com/episode/0qT3uaRg3XAqyHVVHcjyUh?si=68329c8bdf71401c Chad Prevost and Frederik Pferdt discuss the importance of developing a mindset that can navigate and shape an uncertain future. Pferdt stresses the need to move away from fear and uncertainty...
Stress Doesn’t Have to be the Enemy: Transforming Your Relationship with Pressure
Chad discusses the concept of stress in today’s fast-paced world, exploring its impact on the human body and mind. He highlights the importance of understanding and managing stress to improve overall well-being. He presents a counterintuitive perspective that stress can be beneficial when viewed as a positive force.
Later, he explores the interplay between stress and social isolation, emphasizing the importance of social support in managing stress. Embrace stress as an opportunity for connection and resilience, and develop courage in handling life’s challenges with the support of others.
Top 5 and Why: Current Fatherhood Books
1. The Secrets of Happy Families: Improve Your Mornings, Tell Your Family History, Fight Smarter, Go Out and Play, and Much More Bruce Feiler’s “Secrets” tops our list because of his innovative and practical approaches to parenting. His method itself is something of...
Be Honest and Unmerciful: Philip Seymour’s All-Time Scenes Top 5 and Why
This is a special Top 5, equipped with a Top 5 right behind. In other words, this could have easily been a Top 10, but no double-albums here. Only ifs and buts, no beer and nuts. Big role or small, good guy or bad, Hoffman's talent, craft and discipline was always...
Top 5 and Why: Best Bob Dylan Songs
If a song moves you, that’s all that’s important… I don’t have to know what a song means. All Top 5 and Whys are tough, but this may be the toughest. The point of the Top 5 and Why is to skim the tippy-tops, to point at the high-heights. We could be systematic and...
Top 5 and Why: Jack Black
Thomas Jacob "Jack" Black is where it's at. He's funny, a better singer than you might think, and has morphed into a gifted character-actor as well. He has a long list to choose from, but if you're forced to choose just five, consider these: 1. School of Rock If...
To Build a Private Pirate Snowman: On Dreams and Parenting
It was just past the New Year and only three days in to the second half of the school year, and wham: Snow in Chattanooga. Beautiful on the outside, three restless, bickering, cabin-fevered kids on the inside. Third snow of the season. 8 inches by my rough estimation...
5 Takeaways from ‘Daily Rituals’: Serious Creatives and How They Make it Happen
"It's no easy business to be simple." Gustave Flaubert had a terrible time keeping his life and art simple in the ways he wanted them. Of course, he did manage to achieve something through his years of toil and search for le mot juste, and the discipline of his...
A Bigger Picture: Claudio Saunt’s More Complete View of America in 1776
I just happened across an impressive interactive time map showing the loss of native American land year by year since 1776. It's enthralling to stop the rapid progression and check it out year by year. The map led me to Claudio Saunt, author of the well-researched and...
Charles Wright: The Poet Laureate without a Program
"History handles our past like spoiled fruit." If you haven't discovered Charles Wright until now, he's a great choice for U.S. poet laureate, and as an excellent beginning point, I recommend his mid-career trilogy, Negative Blue. Becoming a fan of Wright's is easy....
Extra Lives: Tom Bissell on Why Video Games Matter
"Are video games a worthy way to spend my time?" Tom Bissell's journalistic, slightly nerdish quest to discover what is great and not-so-great about videogames and videogame culture, is a fascinating book in many respects. Bissell, who is in his mid-30s, is what you...
Italo Calvino Reading from Invisible Cities
Invisible Cities is Calvino at his thematic and structural best. For more about this amazing book check out his Top 5 and Why. The following excerpt was recorded at the 92nd St. Y on March 31st, 1983. Skip ahead to the English portion of his reading if you prefer at...
One of the Best Fiction Works of All Time? The Book of Disquiet
“Literature is the most agreeable way of ignoring life.” The Book of Disquiet stays with you, doesn't want to be consumed all in a rush, and is unlike any other book you'll ever read. In fact, the book stayed with Pessoa himself, discovered after his death in a trunk...
1 Scientific Discovery +1 Social Satire = In Search of Lost Neanderthal Genomes
"Neanderthals are the closest extinct relative of contemporary humans." Has Svante Pääbo found the Neanderthal in all of us, and turned paleontology on its head? In 2010, researchers reported having found that modern humans and Neanderthals shared 99.7% of their DNA,...
Daniel Pink on the Science Behind Motivation
"There is a mismatch between what science knows and what business does." Daniel Pink, author of Drive and To Sell Is Human, makes a strong case for what really motivates us. Intrinsic motivation, which comes out of "autonomy, mastery, and purpose" win by a knockout...
Brian Christian’s The Most Human Human
"Today’s person spends way more time in front of screens. In fluorescent-lit rooms, in cubicles, being on one end or the other of an electronic data transfer. And what is it to be human and alive and exercise your humanity in that kind of exchange?" David Foster...
2 Reality Checks: David Shields’ Genre-Blurring Books
"A book should be an axe to break the frozen sea within us." Reality Check #1: Reality Hunger The quote from Kafka is just one of innumerable borrowings from collagist, essasyist, manifesto-experimentalist, David Shields. This book shakes my tree--or brings an axe to...
Jane McGonigal: Change the World’s Broken Reality One Gamer at a Time
“Reality is broken. Game designers can fix it...We need to design ways for epic wins.” Like many current ideas keeping up with dynamic opportunities and dramatic changes in technology and our tapestry of interconnections, McGonigal's ideas connect to creativity in...
2 Things I Discovered While Reading the Improbability Principle
"If something can happen, given enough time and enough opportunities (according to the law of very large numbers), it will happen." What does David J. Hand and an act of God have in common? This past weekend while mowing the lawn I was stung on a finger. Not just any...
Memo to the Future: 3 Mind-Bending Publishing Books
So is print really dead? Is it going to die anytime soon? 1. Post-digital Print: The Mutation of Publishing Since 1894 In this post-digital age, digital technology is no longer a revolutionary phenomenon but a normal part of everyday life. For the world of book...
Top 5 and Why: Neil Gaiman’s Best
"The purpose of a writer is to tell it new. Tell your story." Neil Gaiman has written for comics, novels, television, and film. Regardless of his storytelling medium (and this Top 5 takes them into account), he is a gifted and talented writer and has produced a rich...
The Reveal: Cormac McCarthy’s Original Drafts of Blood Meridian
Does one always want to know how the magic trick works? Does getting to know the process of something we love help us to love it more? Or does it become so familiar it loses its power? For us curiosity-seekers, we might find it can't hurt to at least get a taste of...
At Least 3 Reasons Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home Remains a Rare Jewel
“A masterpiece about two people who live in the same house but different worlds, and their mysterious debts to each other." It's been a few years since it's release but Fun Home, remains a one-of-a-kind rare jewel of a book. A National Book Critics Circle Award...
Alan Lightman: At the Intersection of Science and Religion
"I believe that it is bracing and vital to live in a world in which we do not know all the answers." Alan Lightman holds a double appointment in physics and the humanities at MIT. This rare combination is exactly what our "multi-culture" needs: a humanist-scientist on...
Tina Seelig: Leveraging What You Know to Innovate
It is important to remember that we've been born to be creative. Literally. The brain is a creativity machine and there's increasing empirical data that demonstrates this. Tina Seelig, author of inGenius: A Crash Course on Creativity, looks at the combinatorial...
Bonobos Really Know How To Do It: Isabel Izquierdo on Play and Creativity
"Play is our adaptive wildcard. Play is essential. Play is the glue that binds us together." Humans share a common ancestor with chimpanzees and bonobos from about six million years ago. They're our closest ancestors. We've made a lot out of the aggressive tendencies...
3 of the Most Amazing Things Bill Bryson Knows: A Short History of Nearly Everything
Bill Bryson was "just trying to fill an empty mind with as much interesting information as it could hold." Sometimes asking the right questions leads us to the most amazing answers. Sometimes the answers only lead to other questions. Sometimes the answers leave us...
Abundance: A Magical Near Future with a Washing Machine for Everyone
Sociologist Hans Rosling was four when his mother first got a washing machine. It was a big day. His parents had been saving for years. Even his grandmother came for the big event. Then she proceeded to watch the entire washing process, mesmerized. How do most women...
The Disappearance of the Famous Stefan Zweig
"Stefan Zweig was a dark and unorthodox artist; it's good to have him back." Salman Rushdie In Wes Anderson's latest film, The Grand Budapest Hotel, a writer relates the long and twisting life story of a hotel owner. It's about youthful love and lifelong obsession....
Question with an Edge: What’s Worth Worrying About? Real Scenarios from Leading Thinkers
At first I was bothered by the whole idea. I don't want to be worried. Things can happen, but why should I hear super-sophisticated reasons for why I should worry? This is partly because What Should We Be Worried About? opens with the possibilities of war...
Ken Robinson: How Schools Kill the Creativity We Need Now More Than Ever
"Creativity is as important as literacy and we should treat it with the same status." Ken Robinson, author of the insightful, Finding Your Element: How to Discover Your Talents and Passions and Transform Your Life, makes an entertaining and profoundly moving case for...
A Movable Innovator’s Fest: 9 Essential Experiments and Game Books
A cornucopia of gaming and literature. The first five are literary, the final four represents a broader spectrum of current cutting edge and theoretical approaches. 1. Many Subtle Channels: In Praise of Potential Literature The name Oulipo is “an acronym for Ouvroir...
0 Complete Answers, 1 Hidden Muse: Amy Tan on Creativity and Imagination
"The value of nothing? Out of nothing comes something." How do you create something out of nothing? How do you create a life--an identity--out of that creation? This is where novelist Amy Tan begins her exploration of the creative process, journeying through her...
Gladwell’s Latest: A Classic Underdog Tale
Things aren't always as they seem. Malcolm Gladwell's books often deal with the unexpected implications of research in the social sciences and often clarify scholarly research, particularly in the areas of sociology and social psychology. He broke through with an...
Anne-Marie Slaughter: Can Women–and Men–Have it All?
"Let's make the feminist revolution, a humanist revolution. As whole human beings we will be better caregivers and breadwinners...the revolution for human equality is happening...how far and how fast is up to us." In the Ted Talk below, Slaughter expands her ideas and...
What Leads Us, the Head or the Heart? Rebecca Newberger Goldstein and Steven Pinker Ted Talk
Plato's main aim was less to teach than to show how you don't know what you really think you know. The brilliant and provocative Rebecca Newberger Goldstein has a conversation with sociologist Steven Pinker which asks what's the most reliable guide for how we will...
Are Humans Morally Progressing? Steven Pinker’s hopeful message also seen as reductionistic
Taboos, Pinker says, certainly served (and serves) a purpose in human societies, in general by keeping one connected to the tribe through a shared sets of values and beliefs, but they can also be fundamental impediments to discovering the truth. He admits that his...
Steven Johnson: 2 Things Every Innovator Needs
"Chance favors the connected mind." How does groundbreaking innovation happen? Steven Johnson's fascinating tour takes us from the "liquid networks" of London's coffee houses to Charles Darwin's long, slow hunch to today's high-velocity web. We need to change the way...
Elizabeth Gilbert: 3 Ways to Face Creative Productivity Fears
Eat, Pray, Love author Elizabeth Gilbert discusses the impossible things we expect from artists and geniuses--and shares the radical idea that, instead of the rare person "being" a genius, all of us "have" a genius. It's one of the best Ted Talks I've seen: funny,...
Julio Cortazar: On Literary Games, Imagination, Reading and Writing
The long gangly arms, the large head still barely containing the wide-set eyes, one almost always set off askance. Julio Cortazar was an imposing presence. Probably a self-conscious Hemingway-esque romantic even in his own time from the looks of all the images and...
Clarice Lispector: 2 Primitive Elegant Literary Experiments
My recent "discovery" of Clarice Lispector was like striking gold. It's funny the way these arcane writers are becoming increasingly known. I won't dare say popular. That's part of the appeal of literature for many anyway. I bet it was to David Foster Wallace too, and...
Multiplying Potential Literature: Daniel Levin Becker’s Many Subtle Channels
Should all "potential" literature become "realized"? Well, no. And that's one of the subtler explorations such a group as the 1960-founded Oulipo spends time considering. Many Subtle Channels: In Praise of Potential Literature is Daniel Levin Becker’s personal history...
3 Fantastic Experiments + 1 New Way of Seeing: Georges Perec
Georges Perec seems to be coming into a kind of fashion here at the top end of the 21st century. The under-translated OuLiPian Parisian created remarkable constraints from project to project in order to be more totally creatively abandoned. It worked. And serves as...
It’s Not About the Bike: The “Book” on Lance Armstrong
It's not about the bike anymore, no. It's not even about character flaws from the loss of a healthy father figure in his life. And you know what else? It's not even about the drugs now. Lance Armstrong's 2001 memoir, It's Not About The Bike: My Journey Back To...
Barry Hannah: A Short Ride with the “2nd King” of Mississippi Literature
Will Barry Hannah's death prompt the sort of popularity that largely eluded him in life--as it does for so many writers? Louis Bourgeois has done his part, assembling over 30 essays about the "maddest writer in the U.S.A." as he was famously dubbed by Truman Capote....
Alan Watts On Becoming Who You Are
"Wonder, and its expression in poetry and the arts, are among the most important things which seem to distinguish [people] from other animals, and intelligent and sensitive people from morons." Alan Watts' wonder-filled The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You...
A Theory of Fun 10 Years On: Fun Is Just Another Word for Learning
"The only real difference between games and reality is that the stakes are lower with games." With A Theory of Fun for Game Design, Ralph Koster has written a truly informative guide--over ten years in its life cycle--of all things creative through the lens of game...
The Cave of Time Conceptual Display
The Cave of Time is the first of the Choose Your Own Adventure series, published by Edward Packard in 1979. It also makes The Top Five and Why best COYA books of all time. Below are some amazing interactive conceptual views of the book. To really appreciate the depth...
Top 5 Choose Your Own Adventure and Why
It's a tough choice out of the original classic series of 184 titles authored by 30 different writers. The books were set in locations around the globe, in outer space, under the sea and in a number of distinctly imagined fantasy worlds. Choose Your Own Adventure...
Game Literature: Seven Creative Storytelling Publishers and Design Studios
It's easy to lose sight of the literature in all the design and "game" components to Interactive Fiction. Partly this is because of the challenge of where does the game begin and the story leave off and vice-versa. Partly this is because stories are often just grafted...
Game Literature: Choose Your Own Adventure Concept and Influence
The Concept: Choose Your Own Adventure books began in 1979 and within a year I was one of the many kids who bought every title as it came out. I was almost as excited to get the latest book as I was to get a Star Wars figure. Apparently, at first the series of...
Hidden Gems: Adventure Literature
Robinson Crusoe and Don Quixote are probably the most famous adventure stories in literature. At least when it comes to the development of the novel. Once we start really thinking about it, other enduring classics may come to mind such as Adventures of Huckleberry...
10 Ways to Become the Ideal Passive Adventurer: on Mac Orlan’s Handbook
"Adventure is in the mind of the one who pursues it." A Handbook for the Perfect Adventurer makes a case for two kinds of adventurers, active and passive--and makes the surprising case that it's better to be passive, vicariously adventuring in one's imagination and...
Riding Around with Barry Hannah: Long Last Happy
Barry Hannah was anything but in-between. He was obsessed with the best and the worst of both his region and country. He was such a remarkable and original voice, that he is often dubbed, "the second king of Mississippi literature." His posthumous collection, Long,...
Top 5 and Why: Best Barry Hannah Books
It's a tough choice but if you had to choose, which ones? Why? 1. Airships Hannah's 1978 collection Airships, Barry Hannah sets stories from the northern front of the Civil War, to an apocalyptic future, to the Vietnam War, to odd pockets of the late-20th century...
‘Placing’ Shirley Jackson
"Jackson spares no one her precise, perceptive eye...when I discovered Shirley Jackson, it was as if she'd understood what I wanted, what I needed, and set it all down on the page long before I was even born." Victor LaValle, who wrote the above in his introduction to...
Steven Pinker: The Better Angels of Our Nature
Steven Pinker's The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined is an amazing and insightful history of violence--with a positive slant. He opens with an impressionistic view of history, one might say would be anecdotal, if not for the systematic...
Ghost Story: D.T. Max on David Foster Wallace
"One of the big pictures that most people have of David is, 'Okay. Ironic guy. Pot smoker. Goes into 12-Step Program. Not so ironic anymore. Not a pot smoker anymore. Realist.' Yes. But the problem with that is that David never stopped seeing the world as unreal."...
Why Negative Thinking is Sometimes the Most Positive Thing
Ken Burns with the Central Park Five
"We as a country have become so dialectically pre-occupied that everything is black or white, or young or old, or rich or poor or whatever, that is a kind of collective tragedy that we all share in.” The Central Park Five preview Screening and Discussion took place at...
Peter Singer on the Evolution of Moral Progress
Peter Singer's classic from 1981, now reprinted with updates in a 2011 release, The Expanding Circle: Ethics, Evolution, and Moral Progress, is a pioneer in the study of ethics and human morality from a sociobiological point of view. More popularly now called...
James R. Flynn on Intelligence Then and Now
"The analytic skills of the masses have grown dramatically. Today, 35% of the population perform the analytic skills and processes of what only 3% did just 50 years ago." James R. Flynn has dedicated his life to the study of moral progress in the 20th and into the...
Malcolm Gladwell on ‘Streamlining’
Tipping Point, Outliers author and New Yorker writer, Malcolm Gladwell, is interviewed by Robert Krulwich, NPR science correspondent and co-host of Radiolab. Much of the talk centers around the definition of “genius” and Gladwell’s article on the Race-IQ debate...
No One Leaves the Room Again: Philip Seymour Hoffman after screening of Capote
In tribute to the recent passing of character-actor supreme Philip Seymour Hoffman this post intends to both capture a revealing glimpse of him after the screening of his film, Capote, in 2006, about a year after the film was shot, as well as to give a positive...
Falling in Love with Fay: Larry Brown’s Most Accomplished Novel
"She came down out of the hills that were growing black with night, and in the dusty road her feet found small broken stones that made her wince. Alone for the first time in the world and full dark coming quickly..." Some have called Fay "uninventive," a "spindly...
Larry Brown on Writing
On reading: “Reading, for pleasure and knowledge, has always been, will always be one of my favorite things to do. (from A Writer's Life by Jean W. Cash)” On going to bars for his material: "It's one of the things I've been around, and one of the things I'm still...
Top 5 and Why: Best Larry Brown Books
It's a tough choice, but if you had to choose five, and you had to do it off the top of your head. Which ones? Why? 1. Fay "She came down out of the hills that were growing black with night, and in the dusty road her feet found small broken stones that made her...
A Thing of Necessity: Larry Brown, Barry Hannah, and Brad Watson
Much has been discussed about the late Larry Brown's rough characters, and his unusual literary path. Much also about the late Barry Hannah's originality. The following is recorded at Seet Tea Studios, Oxford, MS June 13, 1997. "Can you imagine the weightlifting...
Putting Procrastination in its Place
The study and science of procrastination has led us to realize that humans work better--with greater efficiency and pleasure--in smaller units of time. As Natalie Goldberg says in her famous Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within writing guidebook, "The...
On Concussions: Three Explanations for My Split Personality
Concussions are serious business. Knees can be replaced, not heads. Take me. I played almost zero organized football, but easily experienced at least three concussions. After the third I was never the same. Just think what this means for serious aspiring athletes....
The Next Big Thing
Apparently, the idea of this whole Next Big Thing thing is to interview yourself about your current or next book, mention the person who tagged you, and tag up to five more friends. Sounds like fun. Except now everyone's doing it. AND it brings up issues, okay? Don't...
Literary Chops and the Status Quo
Okay, so Hanging Chad hasn't hung it up. Just gone through an identity crisis. Yes, another one. Who's counting? But these internal tectonic shifts are somehow important. At least I'd like to think so. At least if I can keep my balance and redirect. For the past three...
An Orange-Blue Hue: Allman Brothers All-Time Top Five
Greg Allman is at it again. He's writing memoirs and having seventh marriages. He has hepatitis and is long-lived for a man who's lived so many lives. Hanging Chad doesn't really care so much about the current messy details. The Allman Brothers make Hanging Chad's Top...
Self-Pub? Enter Simon & Schuster
I've written a good bit recently about my optimism in the future of publishing. Like most people, I love it when walls come tumbling down. Nothing like taking a chip of the 1989 Berlin Wall home with you. Lots to love about opening up creative industries to a vast...
Does Buckingham’s StandOut Stand Out?
StandOut: The Groundbreaking New Strengths Assessment is the latest in a series of Strength Assessments with a focus is on finding your edge at work. At the heart of the book is the assessment test itself which will let the reader know which of nine Strength Roles the...
So Much Depends upon a Good Book Cover
Book designers give form to content. They gives readers a first hand impression of what they are about to enter into. A designer manages a very careful balance. You don't want to be redundant and show and tell. You basically want to show if you're Chip Kidd. Some...
Creative Process: Know When to Stop!
Where does it come from? Where does it go? You hear a lot of talk about how to "turn on the creative juices," but what about the knowing when to turn it off? While it's hard to say exactly where creativity comes from--one reason scientists have shied away from the...
Sizing Up The Tallest Man on Earth
WHO IS HE? He's the enchanting wizard of rhythm. Wait. That's Beck. You can call him "the next Bob Dylan" all you want, but Bob Dylan never even approached this vocal aptitude (and I've been vocal in my defense for Dylan's vocals). Some say he's got a "Dylan-esque...
Gary Vaynerchuck Crushes It
"You gotta find the DNA of your message." However our own approach to our message and product ends up translating, there's something infectious about the way Vanynerchuk works so hard to deliver his message. Should we all think of ourselvses brands? What I know I like...
Givers and Takers: Publisher-Writer Relationships
I don't know exactly why people get into things like publishing. It can't be because they see a lot of money in it, could it? If so, they're probably not so good at business. If they love writing and are truly business-minded they might very easily become another...
Three Reasons I’m Man-Crushing on Ryan Adams
I remember the day like it was yesterday. Actually, it was two months ago. The day after this year's Decatur Book Festival. I was driving north on I-75, following Shelley from Atlanta back to Chattanooga. This cool music filled the air on the Sunday mid-morning NPR...
First-Hand Truth Behind the Rumors of the Video Game Secret
I used to think I had it all figured out. If my oldest, Eliah, who is now 10, wanted extra video game time, no worries. We sometimes worked out the terms on a 1:1 ratio, sometimes on a 2:1. Read for 1/2 hour, and then you can play your video game for another 1/2 hour....
Narrow Your Vision, the Rest Will Follow
I get it. Niche yourself. I've heard that. Heard it a lot in fact. It's become the new trend in branding and marketing lingo. And, you know, I think that really works for some people. Okay, I guess it could work well for everyone. It's just a lot easier for some...
Three Things Writers Look for in a Publisher
A Writer Wants: A publisher that looks cool! Is there any writer who doesn't? I have to admit that C&R Press has a lot of work toward that end of re-branding. Up to now, it's just another way we've cobbled things together. Appearance is downright crucial. The...
Three Things Publishers Look for in a Writer
Some publishers care less about the writing and more about the marketing plan, and some don't care about how the word is going to get out just so they somehow "get out the word." Instead of some generic list of what publishers don't want, or chiding publisher's who...
Losing My Virginity to Led Zeppelin
The first time I ever heard Led Zeppelin in 1985 I was almost fourteen. It was the summer before I became a high school freshman, and I was already training for the cross country team. I remember the moment. It was sort of like losing my virginity. I'd just finished a...
Who Wins from Random Penguin?
Is it good? Is it bad? Should Rupert Murdoch care? Will Penguin and Random House now be more innovative as a result of combining forces, or less so as a result of the monopolistic threat that mergers create? Are Random and Penguin seeking to have more bargaining power...
Is “National Novel Writing Month” A Good Thing?
It would seem that National Novel Writing Month began on the 31st for all the PR buzz and "planning prep" exercises. Anyway, today is officially the first day of the month-long phenomenon. So whether or not you participate in, or have even heard of, NANOWRIMO what do...
It’s All about Culture
On lunch breaks I sometimes catch Colin Cowherd's radio broadcast, and a couple days ago he was following up on some analyst's assessments of NFL football teams who keep turning the ball over. This year the Jets, Chiefs, Eagles, and Cowboys are having a hard time...
Cycling Has Yanked Our Chain Enough
Lance may not be able to admit that he participated in serial doping schemes, but I have to admit that even faced with the evidence and obvious truth, I wish I didn't. Not because I have my head in the sand. I get that he cheated. But is it really so black and white?...
Six Reasons You No Longer Read the Classics
What's a classic you ask? Apparently, the influence of classic literature on current writers has declined in today's generation of reader-writers as compared to others, a recent "word-frequency" study from Dartmouth says. According to the study, another kind of...
Bill Bryson Takes a Walk in the Woods
Bill Bryson's A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail, published in 1998, is a classic (and there are rumors that Richard Russo is working on a screenplay for a film adaptation). As the title suggest, this book is a lot like taking "a walk...
Travel Literature: William Least Heat-Moon’s Blue Highways
Heat-Moon is a 38-year-old, laid-off college professor of Sioux and white blood. When his wife announces that she's seeing someone else, the crisis deepens. He packs all he owns into his beater van, and decides to take a little trip. He drives around the U.S. on the...
Through the Lens of Brooks’ The Social Animal
I wouldn't say Malcolm Gladwell is singularly responsible for the explosion of popularity in sociological studies and their impact on human behavior--namely, human achievement. But let's face it, Outliers (which now even has a free ebook download) has left quite the...
Blast from the Past: Iron Maiden Revisited
Eddie has come back from the grave to haunt me. I've been playing Powerslave and Piece of Mind wondering what it was that made me such a fan. Around 1984 it was pretty potent stuff. Iron Maiden. Not kidding. I hear they recently had a sold-out stadium show of 100,000...
Novels: The Importance of Ending
As I've written and re-written the ending to The Director of Happiness again and again, I've been thinking a lot about endings for novels. As they're paid to do at places like the Atlantic, they've recently run an article about 10 fantastic novels with disappointing...
Riverbend 2012: Give and Take
When I first got the Riverbend brochure in the mail a few weeks ago, my first impression was that Riverbend must be experiencing declining funds. Just being honest. Nothing against Eric Church. He’s nice enough. Nothing against Foreigner. I mean at some point in my...
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