I reviewed Nick Bilton’s Hatching Twitter, a fascinating history of the tweet and its creators, for the technology issue of the New York Times Book Review. Here’s an excerpt: A hundred and forty characters doesn’t sound like much, but as Twitter has shown over the course of its short, intense life, they’re enough to aid a revolution, ruin a reputation or . . .
It was my habit to start the day with a perusal of a few pages of a metaphysical work. It is a practice as healthy to the soul as the morning bath is healthy to the body. Though I have not the kind of intelligence that moves easily among abstractions and I often do not altogether understand what I read . . .
By popular demand, here’s a lightly edited version of my introduction to the conversation Donna Tartt and I had after her reading last night. • There are very few novelists writing today — or in any era, I suppose — of whom it can be said with certainty that they will be read in a hundred or two hundred years. . . .
I’m thrilled: Tonight Donna Tartt will read from her wonderful new novel, The Goldfinch, at Congregation Beth Elohim in Park Slope, and then she and I will have a conversation about it. We’re filling up, but you can still reserve a spot, if you’re interested. And if you’d like to join us but can’t make it for one reason or another, here . . .
Part two of “Nobody’s Stranger,” my Miami noir love story, is up at Medium today. (Part one. The story’s loooong history.)