Hot links!

An extra helping of shareables this week...

🙏🏼🙏🏼🙏🏼

A few nice things to report: DOGLAND made end-of-year lists from Garden & Gun, Town & Country, and PureWow! Also, the book made the list of the year’s bestselling books at Main Street Books, the fantastic indie bookstore in Davidson, NC.

This seems like a good time to remind y’all that DOGLAND and my first book, THE ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM, are available in all formats for your holiday shopping needs—everywhere from your favorite local bookstore to the big online portals. Got a dog lover in your life? I humbly suggest that DOGLAND will be right in their wheelhouse.

I’ll also take this moment to suggest that a subscription to THE WRITING SHED is not only a thoughtful gift, it requires no wrapping whatsoever. Can you describe for your friend or loved one exactly what the Shed is about? Probably not. But that’s the beauty of it. Just mash the button:

We’re still going through it over here—taking care of a family member with a long-term illness. My apologies for not tending to the Shed as much as I’d like. My brain is pretty fried these days. I wrote a piece for WFAE the other day that needed some revising … I found I just didn’t have the mental bandwidth to tackle the work that it required. So I wrote a whole new piece from scratch. Somehow that was easier. That airs Monday and I’ll post it next week and we can all decide if it was any good.

In the meantime, though, I have been reading and listening to a lot of excellent work. So this week I thought I’d give you an extra-long list of things I want to share. Longer and better thoughts coming down the road, I promise. Hang in there with me.

15 (!) things I wanted to share this week:

1. I was a guest on the HEAR-TELL podcast from the UGA low-residency MFA program in narrative nonfiction. My friend John T. Edge interviewed me about DOGLAND, and we ended up talking about a whole range of thoughts and tips for writers and other creative people.

2. Last week’s piece for WFAE was about how President Biden failed the system he vowed to serve.

3. My friend Paige Williams has a fascinating piece in the New Yorker on bears in Lake Tahoe, and the people who can’t seem to stay out of their way.

4. Another fascinating thing I hadn’t thought much about: Headlights. As in, headlights that are so bright they’re dangerous to oncoming drivers. It turns out that there people who spend a LOT of time thinking about this, and fighting the car companies and the government to dim the lights. Learn all about it in Nate Rogers’ piece for The Ringer.

5. Speaking of light: If you follow the NFL, you might remember the Dallas Cowboys game a few weeks ago when a Cowboys receiver lost a key pass in the sun—even though the Cowboys have a domed stadium. How could that happen? Why did the Cowboys build a stadium guaranteed to do just that? How dumb can a billionaire be? Rodger Sherman explains.

6. On the list of People Who Have Figured Life Out, Rick Steves has to be near the top. This Q&A in the NYT made me admire him even more: “You can go to your grave with a big barbecue apron like a Budweiser beer commercial [thinking] that life was good for you, and not learn anything, and really think you’re the center of this planet, which is fine, you know? I’ve just got this curiosity to get to know the rest of the world and to contribute in a way that makes the world a better place.”

7. Susan Dominus’ story in the NYT was the one that got passed around the most among my journalism friends a few weeks ago. It’s a jaw-dropper, and a movie waiting to happen: Two couples find out they’re raising each other’s genetic children. What do they do about it?

8. One of the best investigative pieces I’ve read in some time: J. David McSwane’s story for ProPublica on a powerful Montana doctor who might be responsible for multiple deaths.

9. The most charming story I’ve read in a while is Tyler Harper’s piece in the Nelson (Canada) Star about … well, a man named Nelson, and the man who loved him.

10. Ettore Ewen, known to wrestling fans as Big E, broke his neck in a match nearly three years ago and hasn’t wrestled since. His piece for the Players’ Tribune on what wrestling means to him is powerful and beautifully told. (The kicker is that in the WWE storyline, his friends in the New Day tag team have turned on him and kicked him out of the group.)

11. Poet Billy Collins does the NYT’s By the Book Q&A and it’s a treat: “I find that family members can burden a poem, especially if they happen to be dead. So if I come across ‘Dad’ or ‘Mommy,’ I’m out. ‘Grandma’ gets a pass.”

12. Shedhead Woody C. knows I’m always looking for dog stories, so he sent along a poem his sister-in-law (a poetry and writing teacher) wrote about taking her dog to the opera. It’s delightful.

13. This is the time of year I save all the “Best Music of 2024” lists so I can discover a bunch of great new-to-me music. The list I always get the most out of is Amanda Petrusich’s in the New Yorker. This year’s roundup includes a few of my favorites—MJ Lenderman, Waxahatchee, Beyoncé—but also has six or eight records I hadn’t heard of. I’ll be diving in.

14. I am a little ashamed to admit that the song bouncing around the most in my head lately is because of a Taco Bell commercial … but I’m not ashamed to admit that I loved Harvey Danger’s “Flagpole Sitta” back when it came out (1997) and still dig it now. I have not been to a Taco Bell in probably 15 years … but I guess they know what I like.
    

15. Let’s close today with this lovely Coldplay video featuring Dick Van Dyke, who turned 99 on Friday. I’ve never been into Coldplay … but there’s a moment at the end of this where Chris Martin improvises a song about old age, with Van Dyke by his side, and that’s my new favorite Coldplay song.
    

    Have a great week, everybody.

—TT