I thought this was interesting this morning: Ron Judd, staff columnist at The Seattle Times asked a similar question in today’s paper that I asked yesterday: Do author’s fabrications undo his good deeds?
I understand Mortenson’s claim of and right for “literary license,” and if the purpose was to just to sell books, the practice is questionable at best. But when the story is spoken as truth at fundraising events, and then money given to charity is used to promote and buy more books to keep it at the top of …

When does a little bit of corruption justify a whole lot of good?
Greg Mortenson’s Three Cups of Tea has been on my reading list (and on my shelf) for almost two years.
And now Jon Krakauer has published an e-book, Three Cups of Deceit that you can read on byliner.com. It’s free to download until tomorrow.
I finished reading it, and if Krakauer’s investigation is correct, it’s disheartening to all of us that work in the education realm of non-profits.
I’m slightly ashamed of myself that I put off reading what is supposedly …

Late last year I went to The Elliot Bay Book Company to listen to Nicole Krauss read from her new novel, Great House.
The story is told in four voices, and she read from the voice of a Jewish widower delivering a beautiful and yet harsh internal dialogue to his estranged son.

Krauss’s previous novel, The History of Love, had a few of my favorite characters in contemporary fiction, and it seemed that Great House – the story of a monstrous desk and the owners whose lives have circled around it – would have a few more.

Here’s the truth:

A birthday tradition: revisiting the books I read this year.

Eating Animals // Jonathan Safran Foer
It might not have turned me into a vegetarian, but I wish it did. My favorite contemporary novelist’s memoir about the food choices we make and the impact they have on our local and global community definitely made me more conscientious about what I eat now.

The last two weeks have been spent writing the biggest (in terms of work and hopeful payout) grant application SideWalk Chalk has ever submitted. There hasn’t been much writing going on outside of of that, but I’m still reading each night until I fall asleep and again first thing in the morning. Here’s the current book… A gift from our board advisor, Teri Hein. Sherman Alexie serves on Teri’s Board of Directors with 826Seattle. This is fast becoming a favorite of mine, and is doing a great job of satisfying …