David Brooks had a great piece at the New York Times last weekend on the social and political benefits of friendship, and how to revive the lost art: Somebody recently asked me what I would do if I had $500 million to give away. My first thought was that I’d become a moderate version of the Koch brothers. I’d pay for independent candidates to run against Democratic or Republican members of Congress who veered too far into their party’s fever swamps. But... Read more
The Book Haven blog has the writer Italo Calvino’s list of what makes a book a classic: 3. The classics are books which exercise a particular influence, both when they imprint themselves on our imagination as unforgettable, and when they hide in the layers of memory disguised as the individual’s or the collective unconscious. 4. A classic is a book which with each rereading offers as much of a sense of discovery as the first reading. 5. A classic is... Read more
There’s plenty of talk these days about whether adults should be spending so much time – as they are – on young adult (or “YA”) novels, or if they need to be reading more weighty books. Over at The New Yorker, Christopher Beha explores what the nineteenth-century author Henry James has to do with all of this: When I mentioned this plan to friends, their responses fell roughly into two camps. “How impressive,” some said. “Better you than me,” others said.... Read more
As an editor, I work with writers – and as a writer, I work with editors, too. I get to see and experience both sides of the equation, and I know from personal experience both that it’s hard to find a good editor and it’s hard to be one. So I enjoyed this reflection on what working with a good editor taught one writer about Jesus: For all that I thought I was being forthright and honest in my writing,... Read more
Nobody likes being evaluated at work (or at least, I don’t). But it can be good for us. If you’re in the position to be doing the evaluating, though, how do you do it well? Over at The High Calling, Glynn Young writes about the five kinds of performance evaluations–and evaluators: I have just walked out of my annual performance review. And this one is noteworthy. It’s my last one; this time next year, I’ll be retired. While I believe... Read more
At Medium, YA author Sara Zarr writes about learning to acknowledge one’s own woundedness: For the last year I’ve been sporadically part of a twelve-step group for adult children of alcoholics. We’re all different but the same—unique stories and past experiences, current symptoms in common. We’re addicts and codependents and perfectionists and procrastinators and controllers and balls of anxiety and need. When I go there, when I read the materials during the week and write in my journal, when I ponder the behavior and... Read more
In the New York Times this past weekend, the film critic A.O. Scott wrote about the slide to juvenile pop culture, and the ups and downs of it. I responded in a Christianity Today piece: Sometimes there’s something to that. Books written for children, movies made for and about teenagers, don’t always provide the kind of intellectual meat that helps adults grow in their understanding of the world. Add to that the steady stream of mediocre fart-joke machines that seek to imitate the... Read more
Just for fun: over at FastCompany, it was recently “coffee week.” It includes a ton of fun features, like instructions from CEOs about how to make coffee, and latte art, reports on where our coffee comes from, and way more. Read the whole thing here. Read more
There’s a lot of talk in the business world about how important it is to learn to tell good stories when you’re trying to build your brand or business. But as Denis Haack points out over at The High Calling, there’s more to it than that: The nonprofit I direct knows that if our Board is to faithfully accomplish its necessary business, its meetings cannot be “all business.” Just moving efficiently through an agenda of essential tasks—evaluation, planning, budget, policy—does... Read more
Mark D. Roberts
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What We Learn from Pumpkin Spice Lattes
We’re having a nice cool week here in New York, the kind that reminds you why this is a great, great place to be in the fall. So of course, it’s time to read about pumpkin spice lattes, and why they’re so popular: Pumpkin Spice Lattes would not be a hit outside the “fall season” for the same reason you can’t stand that one neighbor who still has Christmas lights up in March: the PSL is seasonal, to be enjoyed... Read more