Reading & Writing

“It is not bravery. I wake up and live my life. Don’t you do the same?” We should disallow books like Anthony Doerr’s All the Light We Cannot See. For an author to create two lovable protagonists and force the reader to endure their tribulations and fret over their fates for the entirety of the novel is an exercise in cruelty. A most enjoyable cruelty, but torturesome all the same. All the Light We Cannot See tells of all the humanity, inhumanity, and horrors that were a part of World War II in Europe. Marie-Louise is the blind daughter of a Parisian...

I do a lot of driving. Aside from a 45-minute commute to and from work, I’m usually driving all around Alabama a couple times per week. A couple of months before I started this blog, I started listening to some podcasts about writing, leadership, and the importance of having a platform. The things I learned in those podcasts prompted me to start this blog, which has had a huge effect on my practice and my ability to market myself. So I want to start off the new year by giving you some things to listen to. Here are the podcasts I...

John Hart’s Down River is his second novel. I’ve also read his debut novel The King of Lies (2006) and what I firmly believe is his best novel to date, The Last Child (2009). Hart is a good storyteller, whose books are well-paced, characters well-developed, and settings described so colorfully they’re nearly palpable. Down River is the story of a North Carolina family that stumbles from one calamity to another. Adam Chase returns home from five years in exile, after a jury exonerated him for the death of a young man killed on the Chases’ expansive farm. Upon coming home, he immediately faces the...

Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead is a wonderful story. In her award-winning novel, the protagonist John Ames is an elderly Presbyterian minister whose health is failing him. The story is told through a series of letters written to Ames’s young son. He sets out to tell him all the things a father would otherwise have had the chance to tell his son as he grows up. Ames doesn’t expect to have that opportunity. There is no proportion in love. No constraint. And there need not be. Ames writes to his son about Ames’s own family. About how Ames met the boy’s mother when Ames...

In Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis, J.D. Vance recounts the travails of his family in the years after they migrated from the hills of eastern Kentucky to burgeoning middle Ohio during the height of American industrialization. But Hillbilly Elegy is not only a book about Vance’s family but rather a broader discussion of the plight of all the thousands of Scots-Irish families who emigrated from Appalachia to the Midwest on promises of better lives for themselves and their families. These families saw their lots improve compared to their counterparts who stayed behind, but they became alienated...

I was recently reading Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion by Robert Cialdini. And I didn’t like it. At all. Dr. Cialdini bills the book as a study in understanding the many methods by which our decision-making can be influenced by the delivery of an idea. But what it felt like to me was an instruction manual for taking advantage of my fellow man. I completely understand the importance of having an awareness of the methods that are being employed against me. But I dislike the notion of providing a psychological primer to those who would use it for personal gain to...

Murder mystery isn’t really my thing. But here’s what is my thing – reading a fun, light book at the beach. And in that vein, I picked up Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None on the Kindle for my beach trip earlier this summer. Here’s the plot: ten individuals are summoned to a mysterious island by a mysterious host under varying invitations. Each responds to the summons and shows up for a retreat. And one-by-one, the guests begin to turn up dead. With the island void of other people, the guests have only one another to suspect and conspire against....

2017 ABA Journal Web 100 It’s time again for nominations for the ABA Journal Web 100 (formerly “Blawg 100”). The expanded Web 100 now includes (in addition to law blogs) social media accounts, podcasts, and law firm websites. You can nominate as many folks in as many categories as you’d like, using the Web 100 amici form. Here’s who I’ll be nominating and why. Blawgs Here are the only two law blogs I read on a weekly basis. I value my time and they’re worth the price of admission: Big Law Investor: This site is authored by Josh (@biglawinvestor) who...