Category: Books

  • My 2014 in Books

    I read a lot — magazines, two newspapers, email newsletters, and countless social-media-shared links I chase down digital rabbit holes. I’d never know anything, for example, without Jason Hirshhorn’s magnificent daily Media Redefined. But I’m lost without books.  Actual books.  Whether paper or digital, if I’m not reading at least two books then I get…

  • In Praise of Atul Gawande’s “The Checklist Manifesto”

    I first smacked my forehead (ouch!) against a wall of decision fatigue when I was the Editor in Chief of iMedia Connection (a daily trade journal covering a different collision between marketing and technology). The best part of editing involves coaxing order from mess, making points pointier and helping writers to say what they want…

  • Journey Back, Journey On: Watching my son rediscover a comic book 4 years later

    Saturday morning. Mom’s at yoga. Dad’s puttering downstairs. 13-year-old Big Sis is hibernating — those pesky teenagers. What’s an almost-9-year boy old to do? That’s my imagination of what W, my son, was thinking after I shushed him for the fifth time when he was playing in the open area right next to where his sister’s puberty-induced coma went…

  • Is there life after Harry (Potter)?

    I’m Single-Dadding it for a few days whilst Kathi is teaching down in L.A., and our seven-year-old son just made me so proud that I must share. Post school, post Tae Kwon Do, post dinner (pizza, because Dad’s a little under the weather and doesn’t want to cook), I offered him the chance to finish…

  • Everybody’s a Muggle in Rowling’s “A Casual Vacancy”

    As I type these words I have reached page 160 of J. K. Rowling’s new novel, “A Casual Vacancy,” so I’m about one third done and have made enough progress to know that I’ll finish the book and that I can draw early conclusions. Note: there are no plot spoilers here past the first five…

  • Simile Search: Please Help This Writer!

    I’m looking for evocative comparisons that talk about how one thing so automatically comes with another that we take the pairing for granted. Like, “the juice comes with the meat” (except it often doesn’t) or “the warmth that comes with the fire” but preferably less flabby.  Something taste or smell related (for its Proustian oomph)…

  • Short Post: There’s More to the Amazon story than Fast Company conveys

    Kit Eaton over at Fast Company (a must read in general) blogged today about Amazon’s announcement that it now sells more e-Books than physical books.  Here’s a relevant snippet including a link to the Amazon press release: Since April the first, for every 100 print-and-paper books Amazon has sold, it’s also sold 105 e-books, according…

  • The Shakespeare Brand: Yesterday’s iMedia Talk now UP on YouTube

    UPDATE: More of the talk now embedded below. Yesterday I had the great pleasure of speaking at the iMedia Brand Summit– an event that I’ve been intimately associated with for years but at which I’ve rarely presented while wearing my research hat.  This talk is the seed of my next book length project, and I…

  • Book Review: “Scrawl,” a terrific YA novel by Mark Shulman

    Here’s the executive summary of this post: “Scrawl” reveals the inner life of a junior high school bully, a huge, violent, lower class, shambling boy named Tod Munn who is secretly brilliant but plays being an oaf to conceal his intelligence and retain his hidden-in-plain-sight status in the complex social economy of his school. We…