Another year, another round-up of things I read online that I found amusing, though-provoking, challenging to my world view or simply validating of my smug sense of being right about everything. As with last year’s list, a piece will make the cut if I’m still thinking about it the next day (even if I’m thinking about it angrily). Some pieces are included simply because I enjoyed the writing style. The stand out publications for 2014 are The Appendix and Aeon.
And if you only read two things from this list, make them:
- Andrew O’Hagan’s Ghosting: Julian Assange (London Review of Books, 6 March 2014). This is a superb piece of work from a brilliant writer who was commissioned to produce a biography of a narcissist and failed. The story of the failure becomes an eloquent biography in its own right.
- Gene Weingarten’s The Peekaboo Paradox (The Washington Post, 22 January 2006). Technically not published in 2014, but this is when I read it. I enjoyed this piece because it reads like a fine piece of fiction.
Best writing on journalism and publishing for 2014
- Why Audiences Hate Hard News—And Love Pretending Otherwise
- You’re not going to read this
- Does journalism still require impartiality?
- George Packer: Is Amazon Bad for Books?
- Open Access 2.0: Access to Scholarly Publications Moves to a New Phase
- I Was a Digital Best Seller!
- How Did Amazon End Up as Literary Enemy No. 1?
Best writing by or about writers and writing
- Elegy for a Country’s Seasons by Zadie Smith
- The American Scholar: Ten Best Sentences – Our Editors
- Stop Comparing the NSA to <em>1984</em> (and Start Comparing It to Philip K. Dick)
- Stupid Questions by Tim Parks
- 10 overlooked novels: how many have you read?
- Christine Smallwood: Phyllis Rose’s “The Shelf: From LEQ to LES”
- Our Kind of Ridiculous: Yous, Me and Blackness as Probable Cause
- Growing Up in Therapy
- The Psychology of Writing and the Cognitive Science of the Perfect Daily Routine
- The 10 Best Ghost Stories
- Whipping Boy
- The pencil and the damage done
- How to write a novel using the snowflake method
Best writing on politics
- An Open Letter to My Bogan Country Men Regarding Australia Day
- What the Fox Knows
- 2013: On Being Offended | Article | Tiny Mix Tapes
- The Good of Government by Roger Scruton | First Things
- The Fog Machine of War
- Progressives need to change the conversation
- Tracker articles – Warren Mundine : The White Sheep of the Family? – August 2013
- Alexei Sayle’s Marxist demolition of Strictly Come Dancing
- The ideology reigniting the History Wars at PM’s literary awards
Best writing on wealth inequality
- The Vampire Squid Strikes Again: The Mega Banks’ Most Devious Scam Yet
- One-Percent Jokes and Plutocrats in Drag: What I Saw When I Crashed a Wall Street Secret Society
- The remarkable persistence of power and privilege | Inside Story
- For the Love of Money
- Piketty’s Fair-Weather Friends | Jacobin
- Failing union of capitalism and democracy fuels rise in inequality
- We need to talk about growth. (And we need to do the sums as well.) – Persuade Me
Best historical writing
- Imaginary Jews by Michael Walzer
- How a Little Person Became the Most Famous Filipino in Nineteenth-Century Britain—Blog
- The Shopping Mall’s Socialist Pre-History | Jacobin
- Yesterday’s drugs are tomorrow’s medicines – Benjamin Breen – Aeon
- The Fasinatng … Frustrating … Fascinating History of Autocorrect | Gadget Lab | WIRED
- How history forgot its role in public debate – David Armitage – Aeon
- Meet the ghost-sign hunters
Best ethnographic and travel writing
- WHO IS THE DANDY MAN? The Congo Subculture Uncovered
- Giving Money to Child Beggars Is the Least Generous Thing a Tourist Can Do
- Naked, Covered in Ram’s Blood, Drinking a Coke, and Feeling Pretty Good
- http://media.news.com.au/nnd/captivate/edenhope/
- Rotherham child sex abuse: it is our duty to ask difficult questions
- The Laborers Who Keep Dick Pics and Beheadings Out of Your Facebook Feed | WIRED
- Notes on the Exotic – The New Yorker
- All Dressed Up For Mars and Nowhere to Go — Matter — Medium
- Eric Wolf, Europe and People Without History–Geography,States,Empires
Best writing on ethics and the examined life
- What You Learn in Your 40s – NYTimes.com
- All by myself: is loneliness bad for you?
- The Trick of Life
- If everyone’s an idiot, guess who’s a jerk? – Eric Schwitzgebel – Aeon
- When is one ready to get married? | Philosophers’ Mail
- Your desire to be famous – and the problems it will bring you | Philosophers’ Mail
- New Statesman | Think before you act: against the modern cult of spontaneity
- How much should we worry about death? – Stephen Cave – Aeon
- The Real Link Between Creativity and Mental Illness | Beautiful Minds, Scientific American Blog Network
- How a hero narrative can transform the self – Will Storr – Aeon
- Why I Hope to Die at 75
- Anna Deavere Smith on Discipline and How We Can Learn to Stop Letting Others Define Us
- What Happens When We All Live to 100?
- The Benjamin Franklin Effect: The Surprising Psychology of How to Handle Haters | Brain Pickings
- How to Hone Your Creative Routine and Master the Pace of Productivity
- What if You Just Hate Making Dinner?
- A Religion for the Nonreligious | Wait But Why
- A Foodie Repents
- Why broken sleep is a golden time for creativity – Karen Emslie – Aeon
- Morality is the key to personal identity – Nina Strohminger – Aeon
- On Marrying the Wrong Person
- 10 Types of Odd Friendships You’re Probably Part Of | Wait But Why
Best writing on nerd hubris
- We need to talk about TED
- In the Name of Love | Jacobin
- The onrushing wave
- The Powerlessness of Positive Thinking
- Lizzie Widdicombe: Could Soylent Replace Food?
- My day as a robot – The Boston Globe
- Edge
- Jill Lepore: What the Theory of “Disruptive Innovation” Gets Wrong
- Atheists Used to Take the Idea of God Seriously. That’s Why They Mattered.
- Creativity Creep – The New Yorker
- Generation TED and the power of positivity – Julian Baggini – Aeon
Best writing on activist hubris
- Writing letters of protest won’t help change Australia’s refugee policy
- LRB · Andrew O’Hagan · Ghosting: Julian Assange
- On the march
- The Truth About Anonymous’s Activism | The Nation
- Stop Trying to Save the World
Best writing on children and parents
- RELENTLESS: The Brutal Truth About The Third Child
- Darwin’s Children Drew All Over the On The Origin of Species Manuscript (Updated)—Blog
- Karl Ove Knausgaard’s ‘Boyhood Island’
- New Parenting Study Released
- The most liberating thing that ever happened to me
- Mothering lessons for the girl who cried bear
- The day I left my son in the car
- Classic childhood books from yesteryear
- Children have a right to be unhappy
- Babies, business and gender
- The Peekaboo Paradox
- Why Kids Sext
- Amazon.co.uk: Profile For Hamilton Richardson: Reviews
Best writing on sex
- The rise and rise of sexology
- Shades of grey no more for the modern woman’s erotic imagination
- Cosmo’s 44 Most Ridiculous Sex Tips
Most amusing writing (and photographs)
- Animal escape drill at Tokyo zoo – in pictures
- Fitzwilliam Notebook (Normalized Version)
- Bob Carr’s diary: the outtakes | Ben Pobjie
- How Football Sounds To People That Don’t Care. This Guy Nails It.
- Movie Girlfriends Hate Heroism
- IS got you down? Worried about the future of media? Ask Sam de Brito! –
- “As A Father of Daughters”
- The Women’s Petition Against Coffee 1674
- 12 Stickers In The Wrong Places [NSFW] – The Poke
- Ayn Rand Reviews Children’s Movies – The New Yorker
Best writing on feminism
- When a Bar Full of Women Was a Nightmarish Dystopia
- Emily Nussbaum: The Shallowness of “True Detective”
- The Danger of the Monster Myth
- Feminism for Them? | Susan Faludi | The Baffler
- Not All Men: A Brief History of Every Dude’s Favorite Argument
- Your Princess Is in Another Castle: Misogyny, Entitlement, and Nerds
- Exclusive: Monica Lewinsky on the Culture of Humiliation
- Why Are All the Cartoon Mothers Dead?
- LRB · Katrina Forrester · Blame it on the management: Working Girls
- The Case for Female Astronauts: Reproducing Americans in the Final Frontier—Vol. 2, No. 3
- Wonder Woman: The Weird, True Story by Sarah Kerr
- Good Feminist | Boston Review
Best writing on education and academia
- Works Cited: Humanities scholarship is incredibly relevant, and that makes people sad.
- Feature: Why do some academics feel like frauds?
- No, Jane Austen Was Not a Game Theorist
- Surviving the post-employment economy
- Are adjunct professors the fast-food workers of the academic world?
- Academic scattering
- The Soul of the Research University
- The Miseducation of America
- Is coding the new literacy?
- Anthropology Inc.
- No More Plan B: A Very Modest Proposal for Graduate Programs in History
- Finding Meaning After Academe
- The Hi-Tech Mess of Higher Education by David Bromwich
- The Future of College?
- Are Élite Colleges Bad for the Soul?
- References, Please by Tim Parks
- College Students’ Thesis Topics Are Hilarious, Depressing
- Students don’t know what’s best for their own learning
- The Academic Profession in Transition (2011 report)
Best writing on science
- Why we love repetition in music – Elizabeth Hellmuth Margulis – Aeon
- Does the Science of Human Behavior Only Show Us What We Want to See?
- The Backfire Effect
- The Science of Why We Don’t Believe Science
- It’s time to look for life in Europa’s ocean – Lee Billings – Aeon
- Structuralism: Thinking with Computers
- Magical thinking still haunts all our thoughts – Andrew Crumey – Aeon
- Survival of the Sexiest | The Nation
- The Big Bang Is Hard Science. It Is Also a Creation Story. – Issue 17: Big Bangs – Nautilus
- View From Nowhere
- Quantum weirdness is everywhere in life – Johnjoe McFadden – Aeon
- Graphs are no longer enough: it’s time wonks and experts joined the fight
Best writing on language
- that munanga linguist: Linguists supporting communities: We did it well before. Did we lose our way?
- Nobody Said That Then! Masters of Sex, Not of Slang
- Featured Linguist: Nicholas Evans | The LINGUIST List
- The Artist of the Unbreakable Code – Issue 18: Genius – Nautilus
- There is no language instinct – Vyvyan Evans – Aeon
- Egyptology can help us future-proof our culture – Grayson Clary – Aeon