Wired has a new piece about the recent lonelygirl15 video phenomenon. I like the embedded video within the article. I wish more journalists would embrace the contextual possibilities of the web like that.
Category: writing
New York Inquirer interviews Keith Gessen of the literary magazine n+1, sometimes rival to McSweeney’s. I like his comments on book reviews:
One of the few rules we have for book reviews is that they can’t be about dead authors. It’s very easy to say I love Tolstoy or Flaubert or whoever, and my contemporaries are not up to that standard… ItÄôs fun, I’ll admitÄîbut in the end nothing could be less interesting or useful. And nothing could tell us less about the way we live now.
Wikipedia article on fictional expletives, which have commonly been used “to add nuance to the fictional cultures in their work, and sometimes as a form of censorship (or getting around it).”
A cool slide show on the evolution of writing. I’m partial to the early Roman and later Italian letters. Mature Gothic looks cool en masse… but I can’t read it.
Making Comics (review: 4.5/5)
Scott McCloud’s latest is all about story-telling secrets and how to shape your own vision for comics. It mimics the style of his earlier book, Understanding Comics, using the form to explain itself, and expands a bit more on the theories he presented there.
I think it’s wonderful to see how much more mature McCloud’s own work is in this book. The art is better; the layouts are cleaner and more interesting. The visuals are all just more inventive and lively. I was glad that McCloud seemed to stretch himself and take the opportunity to demonstrate his competence by illustrating in a lot of different styles–you can tell that he really put a lot of work into these panels. All that effort pays off, especially in the chapters devoted to backgrounds and to facial expressions.
One of my complaints about UC was that he didn’t give enough examples–but Making Comics absolutely makes up for that. To boot, there’s an excellent bibliography, and every chapter has some supplementary wrap-up content. Each chapter ends with a couple pages of footnotes, commentary, and also exercises to help you flex your comics skillz. Very impressive, and a lot of fun to read.
Some interesting thoughts on blog readability. Paul Bausch crunched the readability of the most popular blogs using the Gunning and Flesch-Kincaid measures: “My prediction that the most popular blogs would have very good readability scores didn’t quite hold up. I can’t pinpoint a “sweet spot”, but maybe blog readers enjoy more densely layered text. (Think Time instead of Newsweek, but not quite Harvard Law Review.)” A text file of the results is available for your perusal.
This platitude is the new dead metaphor. Kottke revives and collects some previous research into one of the latest language fads, where X is the new Y. I think I’m officially over this phrase.
Thank you thank you. I love this stuff. The latest in Rebecca Blood’s Bloggers on Blogging series, an interview with Scott Rosenberg.
NaBloPoMo is the new NaNoWriMo
I’ll admit that I’ve gotten a bit intimidated by National Novel Writing Month as the start date approaches. Enter my new, slightly less imposing challenge: National Blog Posting Month, where the goal is to write at least a post a day, every day, for one month. I can do that. And there are potential prizes, too! Shweeeeet.
Ordinary People (review: 4.5/5)
“The problem of connecting is partly that of fitting mood with opportunity.” Judith Guest‘s book was such a pleasant surprise. In a nutshell, it’s about a family dealing with tragedy, focusing on that odd relationship of individual and family. Nothing new there, but the writing is so tight and so focused. What I really like is that Guest can slide so smoothly from narration to thought to dialogue and every which other way. The writing as much as the style makes it a compulsive page-turner. Add in some great male characters whose internal world feels really genuine, and some genuinely laugh-out-loud moments balance the more patient, reflective meditation on family. This bit was perfect:
He would do it, too, if it were not for a frenetic-butterfly manner that she radiates. It grates on his nerves. She has an endless supply of nervous energy. Tiny women are often like this, he thinks. They never run down. They overwhelm him, make him feel lumpish and stupid. Too large.
Another priceless bit of craft was husband and wife driving out to a dinner party. Within their routine dialogue, Guest makes the next scene transfer so seamlessly…
“We’ll go in the spring,” he says. “I promise.”
She doesn’t answer.
“Who’s going to be there tonight?” Testing. Her tone when she answers will tell him if she is angry.
“Well, the Murrays. It’s their house.” She slides over next to him. Happily grateful, he squeezes her hand. Wonderful, unpredictable girl. “And Mac and Ann Kline, Ed and Marty Genthe. And us.”
“Why us? We hardly know the Murrays.”
“That’s why. That’s why you have people over, darling. To get to know them better.”
(thanks for the recommendation, Kelli)
An absolutely fantastic interview with Neil Gaiman over at Bookslut. Aside from great fiction, Gaiman is known for signing every book, no matter how long it takes:
The worst one ever was in Sao Paulo in Brazil in 2001. Brazilians are lovely people. But they donÄôt hold back on how they feel. And 1,200 showed up and at 700 the shop decided to cap the line, thinking that was enough. The 500 people left behind apparently explained to them in a very enthusiastic and cheerful and Brazilian sort of way that they could of course shut down the line if they wanted to but those 500 people would destroy their store if they did. And they thought about it for a minute, reopened the line, and I signed for all 1,200. But I only discovered this happened until the end of the day. I stayed until 2 oÄôclock in the morning, and I lost my voice.
Gaiman’s got a new book out, by the way, Fragile Things: Short Fictions and Wonders.
The Los Angeles Times is sending its investigators out to investigate itself. In wake of job-cutting orders from its parent company, the new project is to research and figure out how to re-connect with readers in paper and on the web. I like this: “We shouldn’t be waiting for corporate headquarters or a think tank or a consultant to come up with ideas to secure our future.”
Steven Johnson writes about pop culture and the Long Zoom, a way of seeing and understanding over immense ranges. “It is, by any measure, a difficult way of thinking, in part because our brains did not evolve tools to perceive or intuitively understand the scales of microbes or galaxies… But a decade or two from now, when we look back at this period, it is more likely that the work that will fix the long zoom in the popular imagination will be neither a movie nor a book nor anything associated with the cultural products that dominated the 20th century. It will be a computer game.”
Beautiful Evidence (review: 4.5/5)
This is such an excellent book. Just a couple days after finishing Beautiful Evidence, I decided to invoke my alumni privileges at Emory’s Woodruff Library so I could get my hands on his earlier books. I’m in the midst of Envisioning Information right now, and it’s looking to be just as good.
Edward Tufte has crafted a reputation as something of a guru of analytic design and information display. His latest work, Beautiful Evidence is about the act of visual communication in all its forms–using image, word, number, line, or otherwise. He’s talking about the transformation of observation to presentation, “how seeing turns into showing”. This comes out in chapters dedicated to mapped images; links, arrows & causation; corrupted evidence; and more, all calling on case studies from modern science back to ye olden days.
The book itself sets a good model for what it discusses, as a beautifully printed book with thoughtful, purposeful design. Add in some lovely colors and inks on some really nice paper. I liked seeing the “footnotes” placed in the left and right margins vertically parallel with the corresponding phrase, so the commentary is but a glance away. And for the most part, each page represents a full argument. While it can make for some slightly terse writing, I have to admire the editorial restraint to not let the ideas run all over the pages.
I give petty demerits for a little bit of loose organization. The individual chapters and pages are really tight. On the other hand, at the macro-level the book is a wee jumbled. He expands on some incredibly cool ideas on sparklines; but then there’s also a reprint of an old pamphlet on PowerPoint; and then there’s also an odd dwarf chapter on sculpture. Hmm.
Later, Tufte offers a bit pseudo-inspirational advice on information design: “What would Richard Feynman think?” Well, gosh, Ed. I really don’t have a clue. How about a little help? I’m reading your book so you can tell me. Don’t make me think! Er…
But really, it’s easy to criticise because it’s kind of hard to choose which excellent parts to highlight. There’s a lot to learn here.
Salman Rushdie will join Emory University as Distinguished Writer in Residence, as well as hand over his archive, which is really cool. I’m interested to see the ripple effect from this in public events over the next couple years. Might be some good stuff if he’s hanging out in Atlanta more. Hopefully he’ll stir up some trouble. [thanks Rebekah]
Ditto this: “Feel free to use real paragraphs and explain stuff. I have time.” I absolutely agree that the listing thing is getting a little old.
The Wisdom of Crowds (review: 4/5)
James Surowiecki’s recent book focuses on the problems faced by groups (namely, cognition, coordination, and cooperation), and exactly what makes good decisions possible (that is, diversity, independence, decentralization).
Like some other consilient books I’ve dabbled in, Surowiecki draws from a bunch of academic and popular work, and uses it to neatly package his ideas for human consumption. In his favor, I really like that he doesn’t stretch his research too far. The main idea seems more richly documented and better sculpted than in books like Blink and The Tipping Point. As an added bonus, his writing is more free from chummy background stories–i.e. not all research needs multi-paragraph introductions. Instead, we get a nice solid edifice of ideas–thank you, James.
If anything were missing, I’d say Surowiecki could have been a bit more bold in offering his own views. The writing flows so nicely from the research that a bit more conscious effort to bracket his own prognostication and advocacy wouldn’t hurt.
But, alas, one side effect of his thoughtful exposition is that he isn’t as entertaining and personable as, say, Steven Johnson. One bright exception was the few pages discussing the “gangster-film theory of business”. As a model of the corporation, we have The Godfather, Part II with the powerful Corleone dynasty directing a huge network of businesses (on both sides of the law). Heat provides a model for the agile, intimate workings of small-enterprise. And then we there are groups like in Reservoir Dogs, performing a simple one-off project and disbanding afterward. So perhaps none of those are models of success, but it’s great stuff nonetheless.
NaNoWriMo registration opens up soon, if not already. Typing begins on November 1. Let’s see… 50,000 words… 175 pages… 30 days… That’s doable, right? I think I’ll go ahead and sign up, and pray for a productive October to keep the schedule clear.
Update: I’m officially registered! Heaven help me.
Mark Larson 