Andy Unedited
Exploring Books, Life, and Writing
Once at a block party as several dozen of us stood around chatting and eating, a neighbor came up to me and said, “The Smiths are moving away next week, and we have a gift for them, but could you say a few words of farewell?” It was the first I’d heard of this. “Right …
NCIS is a predictable TV crime series that has just launched its eighteenth season. We usually start with a dead body. Because the death is connected to the Navy, the Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS) team (led by Special Agent Jethro Gibbs played by Mark Harmon) grabs their gear and solves the crime. High level …
I generally don’t make New Year’s resolutions for all the usual reasons. I do get regular exercise and watch my weight. But making plans at the beginning of the year don’t seem to get me very far. One exception is reading. One tool I’ve found that helps keep me making progress is the Goodreads Reading …
It’s not too early to think about that graduation speech you are going to give next May. David Brooks has some ideas about what you should not say. Early in The Second Mountain, David Brooks delivers a devastating critique of the hyper-individualism one usually hears in commencement speeches: Be yourself. The future is limitless. Look …
Talent is overrated. Hard work is undervalued. (Writers, take note.) That’s the message psychology researcher Angela Duckworth argues throughout her book Grit, a message she illuminates with varied stories and interviews. The combination of passion and perseverance (her definition of grit) is a much greater predictor of success than any innate ability. High school students …
This week marks the fiftieth anniversary of the death of Kitty Genovese on March 13, 1964. So here I rerun my post from two years ago on this landmark episode in American culture.
When I first entered publishing, back when dinosaurs roamed the earth, the folks at InterVarsity Press had a slogan for a reading program they were promoting: “Fifteen Minutes a Day Is Fifteen Books a Year.” The idea was that if you could give on average fifteen minutes a day to reading, over the course of …
I am off for July. So I’m running some favorite Andy Unedited blasts from the past. This was originally posted October 9, 2007. The story was a legend in my family when I was growing up. Once my mom went to have lunch with my dad, who worked as an executive at a company in …
I am off for July. So I’m running some favorite Andy Unedited blasts from the past. This was originally posted May 29, 2008. When it comes to the digital future of publishing, we as publishers can be our own worst enemies. Everyone seems to agree that electronic books will be a significant part of the …
I am off for July. So I’m running some favorite Andy Unedited blasts from the past. This was originally posted January 14, 2009. A woman in Indianapolis wanted to interview me. Well, it wasn’t actually even as grand as that. She wanted her kids to interview me.