"...the pale student of unhallowed arts kne[lt] before the thing he had put together."

— Mary Shelley, Frankenstein
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First published in 1818, Frankenstein has endured for two hundred years as a devastating exploration of human ingenuity and inhumanity. Currently placed at #78 on The Greatest Books, a list compiled from over 100 other lists made by authors and critics, the characters of Victor Frankenstein (the scientist) and his unnamed Creation live on in modern popular culture, too, thanks to movies from Mel Brooks, Daniel Radcliffe, and others. Just as impressive as its critical and mainstream legacy, though, is that the world's most celebrated horror story was written by an eighteen-year-old.

Mary Shelley's epistolary tale of an ambitious scientist, his resurrected creation, and their gruesome rivalry was terrifying, beautiful, and thought-provoking. Her descriptions of the scientist's parts stolen from morgues and his secret laboratory humming with electricity juxtapose with the vast, open, sunlit landscapes of Switzerland and the Arctic circle. And her descriptions of the scientist's inner landscape weave interesting patterns across the text with the mind of the Devil-Creation. I can't help but love and hate both characters, and the situation they've been thrust into, and continue to thrust themselves back into, leading to the cinematic showdown in "the darkness and distance" of the icy north. [JG]

Possibly the woman painted here by Samuel John Stump. In 1814, then just sixteen, Mary Godwin fled her home in England to elope with her lover, Percy Shelley, a politically-minded Romantic. She became pregnant soon after, but suffered a miscarriage and in her journal wrote, "Dream that my little baby came to life again; that it had only been cold, and that we rubbed it before the fire, and it lived." She bore another child though, and also befriended another ex-pat, Lord Byron. In his Italian villa, Mary, Percy, Byron, and some friends would read German ghost stories, and even took turns writing their own to share. Eventually, with these experiences and the mythic beauty and danger of the surrounding Alpine landscape, "an amphitheater of mountains," Frankenstein began to crackle to life on the banks of Lake Geneva and in Shelley's mind. She published it anonymously in three volumes in 1818.  
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THE NOVEL OF THE CENTURY

David Bellos
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THE GENIUS OF BIRDS

Jennifer Ackerman
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As far as the internet is concerned, six years is an eternity. That's how long it's been since Ryan Holiday confessed his web of media manipulations done on behalf of his clients (Dov Charney of American Apparel, authors Tucker Max and Robert Greene, and who knows who else). And yet, rereading Trust Me, I'm Lying this past week, it's more relevant than ever. Fake Amazon reviews by the hundreds of thousands, vigilante billionaires conspiring to legally destroy  publishers, a master manipulator leading the free world, Kiki fail compilations...the list goes on. 

Part-confession, part-how-to, this book is a brutal pulling-back of the curtains behind which our news is made. One of the recurring themes throughout the book is understanding the economic incentives of the online publishing world.

• Because there is infinite space for content, unlike a newspaper, there is infinite potential articles to write. Online writers churn out content. The internet is always a click away. It's always on. So, nothing is new for longer than 20 minutes on news sites. Speed matters. Quality suffers. 
  
  
• Most blogs and news sites monetize their traffic by charging advertisers by impressions. The more traffic, the more they charge a brand for exposure. Therefore, click-bait headlines, and lizard-brain, sexed-up topics dominate. Quantity > Quality by these economics.
  
  
• Subscriptions to news outlets are largely dying. Apple OS X may have helped that via un-integrating with RSS feeds, but really, internet traffic is nomadic and fickle. It's like the newsboys from street corners shouting "Extra! Extra! War Declared!" and then the article saying basically, "Actually not." (See: Upton Sinclair's The Brass Check)
  
  
• Warnock's Dilemma exists online too. We fear public humiliation. Putting up content or creating something and having it fall on deaf ears? It sucks. So people get sensational, loud, and snarky. 

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Our society seems much more aware of Fake News, outrage porn, snark and trolls, bribed reviews, and the poor state of journalism that it did just six years earlier. This is still a (potentially protective, potentially nefarious) blueprint in broad strokes for how to understand all this digital unreality we've collectively built. Use this knowledge for offense or defense. Holiday says he's thrown in the towel and is playing a new game, but that's exactly what he would say, right? [JG]
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Ryan Holiday is a marketer and bestselling author of books on media, entrepreneurship, ancient Stoic philosophy, American culture, and the human condition. His work has been translated into twenty languages and appeared in the Columbia Journalism Review, Fast Company, The New York Observer, and others. 

I first encountered Ryan by way of the Chase Jarvis Live show, and since have discovered an incredible amount of books from other authors and creatives, including bestselling author Robert Greene, CEO of Breather Julian Smith, human guinea pig Tim Ferriss. I'm also a fan of four other books by Ryan:
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6. "Controversial ideas are the victims of snark." 

5. "If I master the rules that govern blogs, I can be the master of all they determine. It was, essentially, access to a fiat over culture." 

4. "The constraints of blogging create artificial content, which is made real and impacts the outcome of real events."

3. ​ "Behind the scenes, I work to crank up the violence of articles, relying on scandal, conflict, triviality, titillation, and dogmatism. Whatever will ensure transmission." 

2. "In an age of images and entertainment, in an age of instant emotional gratification, we neither seek nor want honesty or reality. Reality is complicated. Reality is boring. We are incapable or unwilling to handle its confusion." 

1. ​"Forcing someone to dispute a preposterously untrue allegation is just a much slander as making the accusation. The types of stories that scream out to be written and broken before they are fully written are precisely the types of stories that cannot be taken back. The scandals, the controversies, and the shocking announcements—the ones I have shown in this book to be so easy to fabricate or manipulative—cannot be unwritten or walked back." 

"To those of you who I have burned in this book, who I have hurt or taken aim at or criticized or made fun of, I'm sorry. Trust me, I'm lying when I say that. It's just that you deserve better. And the second you stop and walk away, the monster will start to wither, and you will be more happy again. I confess all I have confessed in order to make that an option."

​— Ryan Holiday, Trust Me, I'm Lying

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"Last year, forty-three thousand Americans died in automobile accidents. Four thousand people drowned. Two thousand people choked to death on food. Do you know how many died in domestic commercial transports? ... Fifty." 

— Michael Crichton, Airframe
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Airframe is one of the few Michael Crichton novels not yet made into a movie, in part because it would be extremely expensive to produce, and so this multiple-plane-crash-thriller has *flown under the radar* a bit — which is a shame. ​After an international flight incident leaves three people dead and fifty-six injured, the press are eager to break the story—or make it up. They circle around the aircraft company, Norton, spreading rumors and trusting non-experts who have an axe to grind, hampering the real investigation, and putting thousands of daily fliers at risk. 

This tense mystery had me guessing until the end, but what stuck with me was Crichton's exploration and meta-commentary on the media at large—their incentives, blind-spots, and limitations. The context-dropping, insinuating, unsubstantiated bold newspaper headlines and talking heads feel like their right out of today's big media blogs and shows. And worse, the way Crichton shows how fake news has real consequences is a powerful indictment for our post-truth world. [JG]

Michael Crichton (1942-2008) remains the only writer to have a number one book, movie, and TV show in the same year. His novels include   Sphere, The Lost World, Eaters of the Dead, State of Fear, and Dragon Teeth among others. Collectively his works have sold over 200 million copies worldwide, been translated into thirty-eight languages, and provided the basis for fifteen films. He also directed the film versions of  Westworld, The Great Train Robbery, and Looker. ​
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"The first step is to not be embarrassed by how much you don't yet know..." 

​— Steven Levitt & Stephen Dubner, Think Like a Freak

Steven D. Levitt & Stephen J. Dubner are "rogue economists" and bestselling authors of Freakonomics, Super Freakonomics, and When To Rob a Bank. I especially appreciated this talk above of the Stephens' key note at Microsoft about their work and 'Freak' mindset. 
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"Quitting is a highly underrated activity." 

​— Steven Levitt & Stephen Dubner, Think Like a Freak
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INFLUENCE

Robert Cialdini

WHY WE BUY

​Paco Underhill

TRUST ME, I'M LYING

Ryan Holiday

"'God from afar looks graciously upon a gentle master.' It comes from a speech of Agamemnon's to Clytemnestra."

— Terence Rattigan, The Browning Version

Terence Rattigan was a 20th Century playwright, whose best-known works include The Winslow Boy, After the Dance and The Deep Blue Sea. I'll be reporting back after I've read them and some others. From the little biographical information I've read, he was influenced by Shaw, Chekhov, Galsworthy, and Barrie. This quote of his struck me for his focus on content over style, which I appreciate: "A play isn't well made if you think about how well made it is, if you see the wheels turning."
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"He doesn't seem to like people to like him--but in spite of that, I do--very much."

— Taplow, The Browning Version
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