Nov 20, 2025 | Current Ned Note, On Books, Past Notes, Reviews
“It’s very difficult to think in celebratory terms about a book that was written in response to a genocide,” said Omar El Akkad, who won the nonfiction prize for One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This. The Egyptian-Canadian author’s book is a treatise on...
May 27, 2024 | Book Media, Current Ned Note, On Books, On Writing, Past Notes
I was honored to be asked to be this year’s Judge for the Willow Springs Press 2024 Spokane Prize for Short Fiction. After reading all the entries with great diligence, I selected Nightwatch by Mathew Goldberg, and in concert with the Willow Springs team,...
Feb 2, 2024 | Current Ned Note, On Books, Past Notes, Reviews
First great read of the New Year! This wonderful, amazing, powerful insightful novel tells a story of our generation. I’ve longed for a novel that is this all-encompassing, this full of heart, and this honest about the current media environment in which we live....
Dec 1, 2023 | Current Ned Note, On Books, On Writing, Past Notes
The holiday season sees a million variations on Charles Dickens’s classic A Christmas Carol, yet this marvelous supernatural tale all too often overshadows the ghostly echoes that permeate Dickens’s entire oeuvre. In John Irving’s book of personal essays, Saving...
Jun 13, 2023 | Current Ned Note, On Books, On Writing, Past Notes
On June 13, at the age of 89, Cormac McCarthy passed away at his home in Santa Fe, New Mexico. I was profoundly unsettled and provoked by McCarthy’s work, and I found his work to be powerful and insightful. His writing always delved into the darker aspects of...
