Writing I admire

 8 .  Hillary Mantel:  The Art of Fiction No: 226 , published in The Paris Review, Issue 212, Spring 2015.  Interviewed by Mona Simpson. “ I only became a novelist because I thought I had missed my chance to become a historian .” This is an interview with the two-time Booker Prize winner for the first two books in her Thomas Cromwell trilogy Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies .  The final book of the trilogy is The Mirror & the Light .  She wrote A Place of Greater Safety , a historical novel about the French Revolution, completing it when she was 27 years old!  Add her many contemporary fiction books, her memoir Giving Up the Ghost and innumerable essays; she was a prolific writer. Reading the interview, I also learned that Hilary Mantel thought Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson was the perfect novel.  HM's words:  "Kidnapped I read probably every couple of years at least. It never loses its magic for me."  A bit further on she...

7.   Now We Are Five , by David Sedaris.  Published in The New Yorker magazine's October 21, 2013 issue.  There is no one alive who can tell a story or write like David Sedaris. I also recommend listening to David Sedaris read his personal essay  Now We Are Five offered on This American Life with Ira Glass .  It is flawless storytelling . Episode 517:   Day at the Beach Act 4 , January 31, 2014  Repeated episode 714:  Day at the Beach, Act 4, August 12, 2020 Now We Are Five is also included in his book Calypso . On a lighter note and not exactly related, but sort of related, the following is a delightful and very well-written essay titled  The Joy of Picking Up Other People's Trash by Jazmine Hughes, published by the New York Times Magazine on 11/01/2023.  In paragraph 6, the author references David Sedaris's propensity for doing the same with a link to a You Tube video of Seth Meyers interviewing David Sedaris.

6.  The Interpreter, India's Daughters , published by the New York Times Interpreter subscriber newsletter in a series of six chapters. This series of journalistic writing comes via the New York Times Interpreter newsletter .   The writing is good, for sure, but it's the story that is deeply moving and revealing.  We binge watch on our streaming platforms and with podcast listening.  Now you can binge read this great series.  The summary at the end pulls it all together.  It also gives us insight into what goes into great reporting and story telling.     Chapter 1:   To Take Control, She Had to Run , by Amanda Taub, Emily Schmail, Shalini Venugopal Bhagat.  Published by NYT, The Interpreter, October 20, 2023. Chapter 2:   Chasing Dreams at a Steep Cost ,  by Taub, Schmail and Venugopal Bhagat.  Published by NYT, The Interpreter, October 27, 2023. Chapter 3:   Bargaining for Time , by Taub, Schmail and Venugopal Bhaga...

5.   A Gallop Through A Horse's Pedigree by Mark Harvey.  Published in 3 Quarks Daily :  Science, Arts, Philosophy, Politics, Literature.  Posted on Monday, June 5, 2023.  Above:  The author's horse Tatonka.  This essay found in the June 9, 2023 edition of The Browser. I can only recall having ridden a horse precisely once; nevertheless, I love horses.  Horses are many things well defined by numerous adjectives; I will select one, majestic.  Amongst the many things we learn in Mark Harvey's riveting and well-written essay, we learn that "Every thoroughbred alive today is an offspring of just three stallions: Darley Arabian, Godolphin Arabian, and Byerley Turk, and a select number of mares dating back to 17th and 18th century England."  But this is not all you will learn.    

4 .   Missed America:  Attacking the right without asking about the left by Johann N. Neem.  Published in The Hedgehog Review :  Critical Reflections on Contemporary Culture, Summer 2023 issue. This article reviews the book Myth America:  Historians Take on the Biggest Legends and Lies About our Past , by Kevin M. Rouse and Julian El. Zelizer, eds.  New York, NY:  Basic Books, 2023. Recently I had two different experiences which made me question my critical thinking ability.  After these experiences, I found this essay published in Recommended Reading by Conor Friedersdorf on October 27, 2023.   I was grateful to read it.  My critical thinking is not as questionable as originally concerned me, but I am aware that, every so often, it needs sharpening. Book link copied from Literati Bookstore, Ann Arbor, Michigan.    

3 .   In Defense of the Rat , text by J.B. McKinnon and illustrations by Sarah Gilman, published in Hakai Magazine .  Essay published in The Browser on October 10, 2023. In Defense of the Rat Rats are less pestilent and more lovable than we think. Can we learn to live with them? Text by   J. B. MacKinnon    Illustrations by   Sarah Gilman    September 26, 2023 | 5,700 words, about 28 minutes Image copied from the essay. Addendum:  December 24, 2023 I wrote in my intro that I would look for opportunities to connect related articles.  A couple of days ago, I began looking through my stack of 2023 New Yorker issues to see if there were any important articles I had missed (I was looking for a particular profile from September), or for issues that I would like to keep.  I came across the Sept. 4, 2023 issue which, to my surprise and delight, was devoted entirely to archived essays about animals.  Even the fiction, The Elep...

2 .   Man-eaters by Brian Phillips.   Published in The Ringer, September 25, 2018 In an exclusive excerpt from his collection ‘Impossible Owls,’ the writer Brian Phillips goes on a quest for tigers in India. Man-Eaters was awarded a Sidney Award by New York Times columnist, David Brooks, in 2018.  At the end of each year, David Brooks publishes the Sidney Awards in his NYT op-ed column recognizing his favorite long-form essays of the year. In his 2018 The Sidney Awards Part II column, David Brooks wrote:  "I mentioned in my last column that there were several excellent essays this year on tigers. My favorite is “Man-eaters” in The Ringer, in which Brian Phillips explains: “The arrival of a tiger, it’s true, is often preceded by moments of rising tension, because a tiger’s presence changes the jungle around it, and those changes are easier to detect. Bird calls darken. Small deer call softly to each other. Herds do not run but drift into shapes that suggest some emer...

1 .  The Weekend Essay:   Lost in the Mountains, by David Owens .   Published in the on-line New Yorker, September 16, 2023. In the nineteen-sixties, my sleepaway camp was delightfully under-supervised. Then a camper went missing. Not just good, well-written storytelling, but a great retrospective commentary on life with children in the 1960s compared with now.  This is something that we don't come across often.  The Mount of the Holy Cross.Photograph by William Henry Jackson / Courtesy U.S. Geological Survey Image copied from essay.

Introduction to Writing I Admire I love reading.  My achilles heel is that I'm a slow reader.  So, I read as much as I can, but not as much as I would like.  I also love writing.  For quite a long time I have fantasized about being a writer and having a  piece accepted by a relatively noteworthy publication.  Recently, I considered all the unread books on my shelf, all of the still to read publications on my side table and all of my on-line subscriptions.  All of it writing by published, award-winning and even great authors.  I have come to the realization that I am [probably] not going to be a published author.  I will keep trying, but there is just too much good writing out there.  This blog is my next best effort to keep track of that good writing and share it with others who might happen upon my blog.  I don't advertise or have a membership to Substack or other things like that.  It will probably be hit or miss for other re...