Tom Swift Writer’s Notebook

If you can’t suck ‘em in any other way, write a header that might rile up some folks — that’s what I always like to say.
A recent study indicates that empathy for others is in decline. The study, conducted by the Michigan University Institute for Social Research, looked at 72 other studies that measured empathy [...]

I have collected a short stack of notes about libertarianism in recent months with an eye on cobbling together a rant. For some reason, I enjoy shooting into this particular barrel of fish. After I came across an essay over the weekend about the original Glenn Beck, I thought I would cease with my laziness [...]

Does exercise have a cumulative effect? This column suggests as much — and the best part is that every ten minutes counts.

Quit Facebook and suddenly it becomes the only topic. On the street, people look at you funny. Funnier, I mean. They ask you Why? But you can tell they really want to ask you Are you going to move to a cabin in the woods to be closer to the squirrels who now presumably constitute [...]

Even before I read the first word of this article I had a visceral reaction to it. The accompanying photographs — my eyes tend to skip over photographs in magazines — affected me in a manner that is difficult to articulate. I knew, immediately I knew, I was not going to like what I was [...]

What is it about female writers named Miller? I so disliked Sue Miller’s The Senator’s Wife that I will not anytime soon consider reading another of her novels, no matter how many of them land on the New York Times bestseller list. Judith Miller, of course, helped sell the public on a bogus war. And [...]

Kevin Horrigan offers a pleasurable read on the the topic everyone is screaming about. By the way, speaking of plugging holes, Mr. Beck …

Long before we became friends, Gabrielle Rose endured what for me is an unimaginable loss — the murder of her best friend while the two attended a highly regarded small college. Even these years later, the act remains unsolved. Drawing both on her experience of that time as well as on myriad contemporary sources, she [...]

Endorsing this essay feels like an endorsement of the obvious. Like sticking up for mothers. Or being anti-poverty. Yet, strangely, someone needed to say it:
“Unaddressed in that calculus is any question of what else an education might be for: to nurture critical thought; to expose individuals to the signal accomplishments of humankind; to develop in [...]

This piece meanders, but its heart is in the right place. Besides, buying books from a big box is like ordering food from a mechanic. Yuck.

Turns out, I am an anti-upside-down Fordist. Who knew?

I’ll read anything by Joshua Wolf Shenk, author of one of the best biographies I’ve ever read, though in this case I’m backtracking. A teaser: “Is there a formula — some mix of love, work, and psychological adaptation — for a good life? For 72 years, researchers at Harvard have been examining this question, following [...]

I’m glad I thumbed through a section of the newspaper this morning that I usually skip. Writes Ann Patchett: “I know this is a modern world where books are overnighted to your doorstep and beamed to your hand-held device in under a minute. But even if I went to Petoskey in February and there were [...]

I appreciate reading recommendations from trusted sources because often when I follow them I experience a book I wasn’t open-minded enough to consider on my own. Mariette in Ecstasy, a novel by Ron Hansen (also known for The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford), published in 1991 and read by yours truly [...]

Recently, someone shared a David Foster Wallace quote I cannot find verification for that goes something like this: writing nonfiction is sorting through the noise; writing fiction is creating the noise. What, then, of the historical novelist? Difficult work, to be sure, as he/she has to sift and sow — has to discover larger truths [...]

I’m not a long-distance runner but I identify with Haruki Murakami, who simultaneously decided to become a runner when he became a writer. Without regular exercise, I don’t have the stamina required to sit in the chair.
I read an excerpt of Murakami’s memoir What I Talk About When I Talk About Running in the New [...]

Thanks to Rob Hardy for the Q&A published at Northfield.org. Rob, a fellow writer and a keen reader, also has a personal blog that is worth the time. I especially enjoy Rob’s ruminations on writers and books.

• I recommend Frank Rich’s column today. I am not sure what’s harder to believe — that the McCain-Palin campaign has incited racist reaction or the fact that the media covers the story as though it was, say, akin to the distortion of his opponent’s tax plan. “From the start,” Rich writes, “there have always [...]

There are few topics more important than the economy and few topics I know less about. I keep starting articles about the mess but usually set them aside, as I would a phone bill written in Sanskrit. But last night I came across this piece by a Nobel Prize-winning economist that artfully describes how we [...]

Three years ago I flipped on Book TV and was introduced to Sam Harris. I hadn’t before and haven’t since heard an author present his material in a more compelling way. So I bought a copy of his first book and after that bowled me over I’ve pretty much read everything he’s written since.
Of late [...]