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Category Archives: books
On Nicholas Carr's "The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains"
So in between dressing up stuffed animal rabbits as Rapunzel and noticing that leopard-skin tights, boots, and earmuffs seem to be popular among mallrats, I’m reading Nicholas Carr’s The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains (2010). It’s … Continue reading
Posted in books, Education, Weird Science, writing
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On Stuart Dybek's "Saint Stuart" and Kent Haruf's "Benediction": Books to Come From Two of Our Best Writers
So last week I had the good fortune of overseeing the visit to our campus and fiction reading by Stuart Dybek, one of the finest contemporary American fiction writers of all. Dybek is known as something of a “writer’s writer,” but … Continue reading
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My Short Story, "The Lives of Gofers," in The Superstition Review
So I have a short story titled “The Lives of Gofers” out today in an online literary magazine, The Superstition Review, set in a hardscrabble Colorado. It’s available for all to read at this url: http://superstitionreview.asu.edu/n8/ This fall I also … Continue reading
Posted in books, The West, writing
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On Thomas Friedman's "Hot, Flat, and Crowded 2.0": A Disturbing Vision of the Future
So I must first confess that I am NOT a Thomas Friedman fan, which I think makes my enthusiasm more authentic for his nonfiction book Hot, Flat, and Crowded 2.0: Why We Need a Green Revolution—And How It Can Renew … Continue reading
Posted in books, Climate Change, Politics
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On Paul Gilding's "The Great Disruption," With a Nod to Eugene Linden's "The Future in Plain Sight"
So I’m a sucker for ‘big vision’ books about the future and the myriad problems we face with climate change and resource depletion, and right now I’m reading Paul Gilding’s The Great Disruption. It manages to be at once peppy … Continue reading
Posted in books, Climate Change, The West
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On the Illegal Immigration Debate, Tim Egan's Savvy Op-Ed, and How It Appears in Novels
So Tim Egan has a blistering attack on the scapegoating of Latinos in the latest Republican presidential debates, and the whole issue of illegal immigration and migrant workers, here: I grew up in a predominantly Latino area of South Texas … Continue reading
Posted in books, Politics, The West
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On Prophecies in "The Bird Saviors": Dust Storms in Texas
So my forthcoming novel, The Bird Saviors—due out in (what’s left of) bookstores in May/June—opens with a dust storm in southern Colorado, and when I began writing it some five years ago, I imagined it set in a fuzzy ‘near … Continue reading
Posted in books, Climate Change, Politics, The West
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Seven Billion Humans & Jared Diamond's "Collapse"
So various news organizations are reporting that our planet is now home to this mythical number of seven billion humans, mythical in that we don’t know that for sure, but it’s a good guess, and all its implications. I still … Continue reading
Posted in books, Climate Change
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Warren Brussee's "The Second Great Depression" & Herman Cain's Nutty Economics
So one of the truisms that is sometimes voiced about our current Great Recession is that “Nobody saw it coming.” Which is nonsense, a myth propagated by dimwit media types who would like to believe this fiction, or who actually … Continue reading
Posted in books, Politics
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Pete Dexter in the New York Times!
So it’s a good day when you stumble upon a book review of a Jim Harrison novel written by none other than one of our best living novelists, Pete Dexter, here: My favorite paragraph, about fiction: “Put together, these things … Continue reading
Posted in books, The West, writing
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