The 2026 Tournament of Books Championship
Read my final verdict in The 2026 Tournament of Books Championship, featuring The Passenger Seat v. Flesh.
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The Catch v. Flesh
I'm Reading Tonight
Data Baby Dedication
The dedication for my memoir, Data Baby: My Life in a Psychological Experiment, via X’s @dedication_bot.
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Love the Dolls
Mannequin X, Chicago, Ill., 2014 | Photo credit: Susannah Breslin
“I was made of flesh and bone. She was made of flesh-colored silicone and had a pose-able PVC skeleton with metal joints.” In my latest newsletter, I have an excerpt from a true story I wrote about dating a celebrity.
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I Was 758
Data Baby, Global
Thank you to @whenifree_iread for posting this cool photo of the Taiwanese edition of my memoir, Data Baby.
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Word of the Day
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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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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2025 Is Coming Soon
“This spring, I got married to an eraser in the shape of a brain.” That was from 2024. Stay tuned for 2025.
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The Hardest Working Director
Adult movie set, Los Angeles, 2024 | Photo credit: Susannah Breslin
“High production value is something of a Greenwood signature. Unlike the low-budget, lo-fi ‘gonzo porn’ of yesteryear, his productions are saturated in deep colors, preoccupied with story, and look more like a movie produced by A24 than garden variety smut.” — How the Hardest Working Director in Porn Gets the Job Done
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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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The Other Uncanny Valley
“‘It’s a phantom-limb penis syndrome,’ said a tall, British man who goes by the name Adam Sutra. Adam is the CEO of CamasutraVR, a company that makes, among other products, virtual-reality pornography. He was trying to explain to me what it’s like when you’re a man, you’re immersed in virtual reality, and you look down at yourself.” — from “Porn’s Uncanny Valley,” The Atlantic, 2018
How Do I Become a Male Porn Star?
“It is unclear if they know who I am. One addressed his email to ‘Sir.’ For the record, I am a woman. I am a journalist. I download their emails in a home office with a desk, a filing cabinet and a garbage can for recycling. I am not who they think I am. I do not have a magic wand that can turn them into male porn stars. I don’t know what to tell them. Truth be told, it is very difficult for men to break into the porn business (unless one rides on the coattails of a female who wants to be a porn star, a scenario with its own set of complications); many of the men who work in porn do not make a lot of money ($150 to $300 for a scene is not uncommon); and what it takes to be a male porn star (to wit: get up, get in, get off) is, for lack of a better word, hard.” — an excerpt from my 2013 Salon personal essay: “How Do I Become a Male Porn Star?”
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Mirror in the Bathroom
“People think The English Beat’s ‘Mirror in the Bathroom’ is about doing cocaine off a mirror, but it’s not.”
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The Real Scene
An excerpt from my 2009 investigation of the Great Recession’s impact on the adult movie industry, “They Shoot Porn Stars, Don’t They?”, a longform piece praised by Longform as “unflinching and devastating.”
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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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Anton Chigurh: An Appreciation
For HILOBROW, I wrote a short personal essay about my affection for No Country for Old Men’s Anton Chigurh.
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