What I'm (Looking Forward to) Reading: Water Over Thunder
I’m eager to read this new book by the late photographer Larry Sultan: Water Over Thunder: Selected Writings.
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Filtering by Tag: BOOKS
Books I Read: The Atomic Habits Workbook
Last year I read Atomic Habits by James Clear, which I found to be relatively helpful in habit building. This year I read the companion workbook, which I found to be less helpful. It feels underdeveloped. So maybe skip it.
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What If?
What if your parents turn you into a human lab rat when you’re a child? Will that change the story of your life? Will that change who you are? Find out in my memoir: Data Baby: My Life in a Psychological Experiment.
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Books I Read: Roadside Picnic
Roadside Picnic by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky is a curious book. There is a monkey child, a zone where terrible things happen, a “stalker” who is hunting for … what? Money? Hope? Dreams? This book was the inspiration for Stalker, which you should watch if you haven’t. But truth be told: The book is better.
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My Goodreads 2025
It's Gripping Stuff
“Fascinating. […] Unpacking thorny questions about determinism and the ethics of human experimentation, Breslin attacks her subject with verve and wit, resisting woe-is-me solipsism without defanging her critiques of the study that rocked her life. It’s gripping stuff.” — buy Data Baby: My Life in a Psychological Experiment
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Books I Read: Songs of Innocence and Experience
I first read William Blake’s Songs of Innocence and Experience in college. I highly recommend this small version.
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Heading Out by Dave Naz
The 2026 Tournament of Books
I’m happy to share I’m one of the judges of the 2026 Tournament of Books. Follow along and learn more here.
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Happy 2nd Birthday, Data Baby
Two years ago, I published my memoir, Data Baby: My Life in a Psychological Experiment. In a starred review, Publishers Weekly deemed it “gripping.” Kirkus Reviews called it “An intelligently provocative memoir and investigation.” The Globe and Mail named it “thought-provoking, ridiculously propulsive.” Read about it.
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What I'm (Looking Forward to) Watching: H Is for Hawk, the Movie
This Is Dedicated
The front-of-the-book dedication of my investigative memoir, Data Baby: My Life in a Psychological Experiment.
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Books I Read: The Art of War
Books I Read: Hard Core
Linda Williams’ Hard Core: Power, Pleasure, and the “Frenzy of the Visible” is a rigorously academic work that seeks to trace the history of pornographic movies and explore what their content reveals about their viewers. Dense and filled with academese, the book tackles adult content with all the sexiness of a spatula. While not strictly feminist, Williams’ work privileges feminist porn over not-feminist porn while failing to identify if there is an actual difference between the two beyond an ultimately failed marketing ploy. This book is a buzzkill.
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Fuck You, Pay Me #26: My Memoir in Taiwan
This is part 26 of Fuck You, Pay Me, an ongoing series of posts on writing, editing, and publishing.
I’m happy to announce that my memoir, Data Baby: My Life in a Psychological Experiment, has been translated into Mandarin and published in Taiwan by Akker Publishing. I love the haunting and sci-fi-ish new cover.
Data Baby recounts my 30-year tenure, from early childhood and well into adulthood, as a research subject in a pioneering University of California, Berkeley longitudinal study of personality development that sought to predict who a cohort of over 100 Berkeley kids, including me, would grow up to be.
Actress Emma Roberts’ Belletrist book club selected Data Baby as its December 2023 pick. In a starred review, Publishers Weekly called it “a fascinating debut memoir” and “gripping stuff.” Kirkus Reviews deemed it “An intelligently provocative memoir and investigation.” And The Globe and Mail described it as “a thought-provoking, ridiculously propulsive book.” I also wrote an essay about what it’s like to be a child guinea pig for Slate. Learn more about my book here.
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Who's the Lab Rat Now?
Revisiting “I Spent My Childhood as a Guinea Pig for Science. It Was … Great?”—my personal essay, on Slate.
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Books I Read: Parasitic City #0.2
Earlier this year I read Parasitic City #0.1 by Shintaro Kago which is totally insane, so when I came across a copy of Parasitic City #0.2 I knew I had to have it. Do you like the apocalypse? Do you fantasize about your body being torn in half and the two halves functioning independently? Do you have erotic fantasizes in which people torn in half by the apocalypse have body horror sex? If the answer is yes, you will love this book. I did.
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Books I Read in August: Favorite and Least Favorite
This year, I decided to read only books with pictures. In August, I read four books. (You can find all my short book reviews here.) My favorite was Susan Meiselas’ Mediations: “a wonderful overview of her career, development as a photographer, and efforts to rebalance the power dynamics between photographer and subject.” My least favorite was Johnny Ryan’s Porn Basket: “the artistic equivalent of watching a child play with its own feces.”
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Everything He Knows About Self-publishing
Kevin Kelly has an exhaustive post on everything you’d ever want to know about book publishing. (via Kottke)
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Books I Read: Porn Basket
I regret spending money on Johnny Ryan’s Porn Basket. It’s the artistic equivalent of watching a child play with its own feces. The child thinks it’s hilarious; you shake your head. Ryan seems chronically stuck in a reflexive need to attempt to offend, but his work is uninteresting and redundant. I like art that offends; I’ve created some of it myself. But this is merely dull. If you’re an eight-year-old boy, you’ll love this book.
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