Nov. 16, 2009, the day I really arrived:

 
Hahaha. I started getting facebooks and emails late yesterday afternoon. I was giddy all night. It actually tickled me even more than making the Pub Weekly and Amazon best of 2009 lists.

This was a dream I didn't know I had.… Read full post »

So she's not dumb.

Sarah Palin deserved all the heckling she got, in my opinion. She made an ass of herself. She seemed to revel in ignorance, and glorify it. But she turns out to be intelligent after all.

I'm watching her right now on Oprah. I'm halfway… Read full post »

The announcement came suddenly, apparently. From Washington City Paper's site this afternoon:

 Just hours ago, the staff of the Blade learned that its parent company, Window Media, had filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy, that the Blade was closed effective immediately, and that the paper&rsq… Read full post »

I got really choked up watching that speech. Obama hit just the right notes, and carried himself just right: serious and a little subdued, yet resilient and strong.

I broke my rule against watching profiles of the victims, because that can send me spiraling down to the dark place,… Read full post »

Pack journalism is a well-known evil in my sometimes-field, but my peers seem to pack even tighter on word usage. One of them hits on a hot new word, which seems to make them look intelligent or dramatic, and suddenly it's everywhere, constantly.

Ugh.

This New York Times column highlights… Read full post »

The authors of the NurtureShock blog at Newsweek asked me to address that question as a guest blogger on their. site. My post is now on their blog and the Newsweek homepage here.

I will follow up here with a related idea here soon. (Hopefully Saturday: I'm giving to presentations at… Read full post »

I saw the punchline coming, though they didn't mean it as a joke. A filmmaker from Estonia was explaining what a young city Helsinki is, and I started chuckling while I asked "How young?"

I knew it was going to be older than our entire country. Twice as old. It was… Read full post »

OK, here's something stupid. I held off writing this post for at least a month because I couldn't decide which of those two to write about, and thought both would dilute it.

So my plane departs in eleven hours, and I'm still conflicted, and going with both. 

Richard Linklater is… Read full post »

Denver got 1-2 feet of snow in the city in the last 36 hours, depending where you live. I got around surprisingly easy last night. It helps to live on a major road.

But I woke this morning to one car after another from the neighboring building spinning their wheels… Read full post »

It started yesterday. Walmart.com announced it would sell the top ten pre-release books for $10 each, plus free shipping--meaning they would lose more than $5 per book.

Amazon matched it and the downward bidding continued.

Today it's down to $9 per book from each, and same-day shipping from Amazon.

T… Read full post »

The list is out. Congratulations to all the finalists.

I have special admiration for the nonfiction finalists, having gone through that little adventure (of creating one):

• David M. Carroll, Following the Water: A Hydromancer's Notebook(Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)
• Sean B. Carroll, Remarkable Cre
… Read full post »

It has been a really sad, heavy 24 hours--reading Sue Klebold's painful essay about Dylan's role in Columbine, reflecting on it, and talking about it--so I thought I'd lighten the mood a bit with an odd moment I just had.

It is of no consequence whatsoever, but I had a… Read full post »

The issue of O Magazine is not supposed to be out until Tuesday, but NBC found a copy on sale in LA. They faxed me a copy this evening just before taping an interview for tomorrow's Today Show.

I had to read it fast, but it stopped me cold several times.… Read full post »

. . .  but. I cannot quit watching this Rafa Martin guy. Check out this video:

I get recognized pretty often now--not by face, but name, when I hand over my credit card. Girls and young women have gotten all giggly and can't take their eyes off me. 

A bestselling book can do that, apparently. But not mine. They want to know what it's like to be… Read full post »

Sarah Palin wrote her 400-page book in four months. (Or she got a head start before she announced her resignation. Maybe she was lying and did quit early for the big-book paycheck. 

Pub date has been moved up to Nov. 17.

Yow. I wonder if it will read like… Read full post »

The Best Of . . . lists come earlier every year, and Amazon wanted to very early, apparently, by announcing a series of lists for the first half of the year. 

I'm just happy, because I made the "Best Nonfiction of the Year... So Far" list. It had ten books, including… Read full post »

I'm back on book tour for COLUMBINE starting this morning (Tuesday).

I'll be in Longmont, CO at 11:30 a.m., then LA (Northridge and West Hollywood) Wed/Th, and an editor's conference in Portland Saturday. (Thursday night is at Book Soup in WeHo.)

Oct. 3, I have a homecoming event to… Read full post »

10:33 pm.

"Live" should maybe be in quotes. I'm watching on my tivo, just home from the gym. But so what. Who watches anything while it plays now? This ain't no freaking primary election returns.

I'm posting DOWN the thread, not most recent on top, BTW. (It's too jumpy to read… Read full post »

Newsweek is running a fantastic daily series by NurtureShock authors Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman.

Today's entry:

Can Extracurricular Activities Solve the Self-segregation Problem?

In American high schools today, it’s taken as a given that extracurricular activities bring students of

… Read full post »

Book TV/C-SPAN2 is replaying Peter Seln's interview with me at the LA Times Book Fest again this weekend.

Apparently it just ran (they don't tell me--thank you facebook friends), and it's set again late tonight if you want to set your tivo. The network is  C-SPAN2, and the show is… Read full post »

Laura Bush announced the line-up yesterday. It's quite a list, and according to the Dallas Morning News story, I'm not one of the headliners. They wrote:

Headlining authors include Buzz Aldrin, M rgaret Atwood, Jimmy Santiago Baca, Bryan Burrough, Jeanette Walls, Jonathan Safran Foer and Taylor… Read full post »

Aside from the ongoing use of "ironic" to mean "coincidental," the most offensive words of the moment are 1) "mindful," and 2) "better" as a verb. (To better yourself. Blech. There were better verbs already.)

Who the hell came up with mindful, and why has it grown so popular among pompous… Read full post »

Sony announced the 7-inch touch-screen Daily Edition today.  PC World said, "In portrait mode, about 30 to 35 lines of text will visible, making the experience very similar to that of a printed paperback book."

An ebook the size of a paperback, with the screen content of a paperback--and hopeful… Read full post »

Charlie Rose just repeated an interview he did with Dolly in 2008. It was her first time on the show. About time.

Has anyone not yet figured out what a talent she is? Or what a fascinating person? She was a delight to listen to.

I loved her telling the story… Read full post »