What I’m Reading
August 15, 2023
Literature, Climate Change, and freedom of the press are the three issues explored in today’s What I’m Reading recommendations.
A Literary Summer
For today’s first recommendation, I listened to an episode of the Monocle on Culture program that promised Literature in London. And host Robert Bound delivered two fascinating conversations about this summer’s literary events at London’s Southbank Centre.
The center’s head of literature and spoken word, Ted Hodkingson, details the thought processes and challenges behind creating a schedule of events. I found his comments of pairing host and writer for panel discussions enlightening.
He introduces some of the topics they’ll explore this summer. Among them is a look inside the writers’ room of the tv show Succession, Theresa May’s book, which the center’s program describes as “searing exposé of injustice, and Zadie Smith’s first historical novel.
I found one programming point particularly noteworthy: a debate on Ai that goes deeper than the usual social media commentary, as Hodkingson described it. If I read the program correctly, anyone can join that discussion online and for free from the end of September.
The podcast also includes a segment where two writers who participate in the activities get a word in.
Kate Molleson, a BBC Radio 3 presenter, introduces her history book on unconventional classical music. The reporting process and the writing style she describes are music to my ears.
And Slovenian poet Lidija Dimkovska talks about the first Slovenian anthology of immigrant and refugee writers.
The program, quite frankly, makes me wish London was closer as it highlights what it means, as the first section of the podcasts called it, to investigate things through writing. Whether you can attend an event in person or maybe fetch one of the streamed events, I hope this podcast episode proves as insightful to you as it was to me.
Climate Change Where It’s Been Hot Already
116 degrees at night: Death Valley’s extreme heat goes off the charts from climate change is the headline of today’s second recommendation.
I found this climate change read in the Los Angeles Times. Writer Hayley Smith and photographer Francine Orr visited Death Valley National Park, one of the hottest places in America, emphasizing the effects of a warmer climate in a location that is used to the extremes.
Smith and Orr show the odd extreme heat tourism and signs that even a location of extremes is beginning to show signs of struggle.
The number of days above 100 degrees Fahrenheit (37 C) and 125 F (51 C) grows, and tree mortality rises dramatically, even touching a tree that experts thought was very resilient: the bristlecone pine tree. Some of the trees that gave in were more than 1,500 years old.
The article also describes trouble in the air and the sea. Bird species in the valley are declining, and sea life could follow soon if the water warms too much.
I hope you spend some time with this important piece of journalism. You’ll also find pictures of the wildlife and natural landscape and short video clips that enrich your sense of place and what the increasing heat means.
Q&A on Press Freedom in India
Today’s final recommendation is an interview on the important topic of press freedom. Zainab Sultan for the Columbia Journalism Review spoke with broadcaster Ravish Kumar and filmmaker Vinay Shukla about their new film “While We Watched” and the state of journalism in India.
I wasn’t even aware journalism in India was under the threat described by the pair. Shukla was so alarmed about the “polarized” media landscape that he wanted to document it. Kumar, one of the most respected broadcast journalists in India, became the face of the film, which ended up as a documentary about the journalist’s life and work as a journalist who’s standing up for the truth.
The article made me eager to learn more about press freedom in India and Shukla’s and Kumar’s work in an environment where most publications have ended up as government “mouthpieces,” as described by Sultan.
I highly recommend this Q&A. Besides an introduction to the documentary and a primer on the state of India’s media, it also includes nuggets about how the filmmaker gained trust in Kumar’s newsroom and living room. And you’ll find a comment on professionals from other walks of life recognizing their own struggles in Kumar’s path to operate a newsroom against the plans the government has for them.
Those are all the reading recommendations for this week. On Thursday, I’ll open another chapter of A Journalist’s Diary about my creative writing. And on Saturday, I’ll update my cycling journey. Until then, enjoy your readings.
