Think for Yourself
“One of the most dehumanizing effects of AI is the short cuts it offers through the gaps and impasses intrinsic to the act of writing.”
For those of us who write to discover what we think about a topic, Dan Chiasson, chair of the English department at Wellesley College, addresses a fundamental question: If we write to discover what we think, what happens if we skip the thinking and move directly into an AI summary?
In the current reality of AI present in almost every computer program, Chiasson writes, “I feel I must actively preserve thinking as the medium in which language is generated, against Google’s satanic offer to ‘Help Me Write.’”
Joyce Carol Oates Can’t Quit
“The octogenarian is on her 50th short story collection and 15th year as an X power user.”
Emma Alpern, a senior copy editor at New York magazine, profiles Joyce Carol Oates. Oates, who turned 88 in June, is well known as a prolific writer of fiction and nonfiction. In addition, “she has become very well known for her second life on X, which she joined at her former publisher’s suggestion in 2012. Now, she posts many times a day, sometimes late into the night.”
The article contains “The Best Joyce Carol Oates Tweets. These are the all-timers.”
Book of the Month Club Keeps It 100
“Since its relaunch under John Lippman 10 years ago, the century-old book club’s curatorial prowess has won over Gen-Z readers”
When I was in grad school back in the early 1970s, I, along with most of my classmates, joined Book of the Month Club because one of perks for joining was the reduced-print version of the Oxford English Dictionary; it had four pages of the original printed on each page and came with a magnifying glass. There were also seemingly hundreds of books to choose from each month.
Then Amazon came along and changed everything about book buying.
Here’s the story of how John Lippman rebooted Book of the Month by focusing on discovery and curation. Aware that “readers have an unlimited amount of books to choose from online,” an editorial team “reads hundreds of books to find ones worth spotlighting.”
The True Story of Laura Ingalls Is Wilder than Little House on the Prairie
“Netflix’s new adaptation of the beloved book series will probably leave out some of the most fascinating details from the author’s life—from Pa Ingalls’s ineptitude to the serial killers that stalked Kansas during her childhood.”
When Laura Ingalls Wilder and her daughter, Rose Lane, “a 43-year-old journalist with writer’s block who’d already mined and sold everything salable in her own life,” collaborated on how to fix Wilder’s memoir, Pioneer Girl, for publication, “neither was a particular stickler for the truth.”
As Netflix prepares to release a new TV adaptation of the Little House on the Prairie series, Rosemary Counter reports on how Wilder, with her daughter’s help, glossed over the unsavory aspects of her life.
Walter Mosley: Mysteries of the heart
Alden Mudge talks with writer Walter Mosley about Mosley’s latest novel, Ghalen: A Romance in Black. Mosley is perhaps most widely known for his Easy Rawlins mystery series, but his new novel is a love story.
Mosley, 74, “writes every day of every week, year in and year out.” Ghalen is his 69th book, exclusive of collections he has edited.
Great novels, like Gogol’s Dead Souls, have these moments where the main character sees two peasants in the field and in maybe three sentences you understand almost everything about their lives. That’s my goal. I want you to understand every character that you come across.”
Hilary Davidson on Learning to Love Unreliable Narrators
“The author of Every Lie I Told explores trauma, creative storytelling, and the pixelation of memory”
Davidson discusses the lessons she’s learned by examining the fictional worlds of unreliable narrators: “An unreliable narrator doesn’t simply distort reality—they expose how unstable reality always is, especially when filtered through any consciousness, mine included.”
She continues:
Writing always begins with a kind of self-deception: the belief that one can translate memory into language without distortion. But anyone who’s ever tried to write about their past knows how quickly truth slips through the cracks of intention. I would start an essay, convinced I was being honest, and find that I’d polished moments, softened edges, rephrased pain into something more manageable.
Finally, she admits, “the ultimate trick of the unreliable narrator isn’t the lie—it’s the reminder that storytelling, like memory, is always a creative act.”
Neuroscientists discover previously unknown cognitive benefits of reading physical books
A new study published in the journal PLOS ONE provides evidence that reading comic books on physical paper helps the brain absorb and connect story details more easily than reading on a digital tablet. The findings suggest that physical books provide stable spatial and tactile cues that lower the brain’s workload when a reader tries to recall complex plot points later. This research offers fresh insights into how digital reading formats might subtly alter human reading comprehension and memory.
Your daydreams know something you don’t. Look closely
“Noticing the patterns in mind-wandering can reveal important needs that have yet to be addressed in real life”
Vardah Bharuchi, lecturer and associate clinical psychologist at Aga Khan University in Karachi, Pakistan, discusses how persistent daydreams may communicate our particular needs or desires. She explains that “the key is not to banish daydreams, but to remain in dialogue with them: what is this dream asking for? What would need to change in your life for this fantasy to lose its particular hold on you?”
© 2026 by Mary Daniels Brown
