Friday Pix: Recommended Reading For The Weekend

Every Friday I point you towards some recommended reading around the blogosphere.

This week, however, I’m going to do things a bit differently. I’m still going to recommend some things for you to look at, but one’s a book, one’s a newspaper and one’s a radio program. (Every once in awhile it’s fun to shake things up…):

1. The Happiness Project (the book)- I’ve often mentioned Gretchen Rubin’s fantabulous blog, The Happiness Project here. Gretchen spent a year test-driving the wisdom of the ages, the current scientific studies, and the lessons from popular culture about how to be happy. Now she’s producing a book on the same topic. The book will come out on December 29, but it can be pre-ordered here. I was lucky enough to read an early draft and I can’t say enough about it…it’s insightful, it’s funny, it’s incredibly wide-ranging and it’s also quite accessible. Plus, it’s a great holiday present for anyone looking to devise – or live up to – all those New Years Resolutions coming your way just around the corner. I know I’ve already got a list of people I plan on giving it to. Please go have a look.

2. San Francisco Panorama – Also on the list of “not-yet-out-must-reads” is Dave Eggers’ forthcoming, one-time-release San Francisco Panorama. Eggers will be familiar to many as the wunderkind who wrote A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, his post-modern memoir of raising his little brother while still barely an adult himself. He’s also the founding editor of McSweeney’s, which will publish Panorama on December 8th. Panorama was inspired by Eggers’ belief that in the age of the internet, we are in serious danger of losing the newspaper as we know it. So as a paean to the broadsheet of yore, he has pulled together journalists, writers, comic strip artists…even kids to recreate that old-fashioned thing we call a newspaper, one more time with feeling. Pre-order here. (Hat Tip: Book Snob.)

3. A National Day of Listening – Finally, if you like family stories (and let’s be honest, who doesn’t?) you should check out Story Corps’ National Day of Listening. The idea behind this project was to get families talking to one another and to preserve those conversations on line for posterity’s sake. Stories will be aired starting today, and you can still go and download your own. As we used to say in radioland, have a listen! (Hat tip: Motherlode.)

*****

Finally, if you live in the U.K. and ever wonder whether Big Brother is watching you, he is. Read all about how the British police are now spying on protesters in my article at PoliticsDaily.com here

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1 Comment
  • Reply daryl boylan

    November 29, 2009, 5:35 pm

    Re the security police piece in PD: which obviously highly placed people in the police thought this craziness up and implemented it??? Someone must know & why aren’t appropriate heads rolling??

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