It’s a journey into the soul that becomes a journey into the mind and leaves you scratching your head at the remarkable complexity of kindness. By the end you just go “people are crazy, man,” and leave it at that. Toward the middle you’re convinced that her subjects are defects who have been cursed with the mirror image of psychopathy. You start the book feeling like a selfish piece of garbage. It seems weird to call such a cerebral book a rollercoaster, but the emotional progression of reading it is intense. Methods aside, Strangers Drowning is a timeless story about extreme altruists-do-gooders whose lives are so dedicated to helping people that they end up sacrificing most of their personal, professional and family lives. It’s original, brilliant and makes for some of the best writing I’ve seen in any form.

The effect of these decisions is to elevate her vision while reducing her presence. But she steers clear of the first person, leaves out most interview quotes, and tries to inhabit her subjects by using free indirect speech. She’s not a hermit or anything you can find interviews and TED Talks and whatnot. In a world in which seemingly every reporter is opining too much and tweeting too much and first-person essaying too much, MacFarquhar is a relative enigma. Larissa MacFarquhar, Strangers Drowning: Impossible Idealism, Drastic Choices, and the Urge to Help Warning: They are all over the place, but are a mix of books about housing, cities and places, and works whose narrative methods I found intriguing and useful. Here are some books (and an art show) that I read or consulted or was inspired by while writing my new book Golden Gates: Fighting for Housing in America.

Obviously the two piles blend together a lot anytime you read a book, even a bad one, you see someone do something you hadn’t thought of before, and it informs how you approach your next piece. The second kind of book is much more wide-ranging-fiction, nonfiction, essays etc. Sometimes that means academic tomes that maybe five other people have read, but I also read a lot of popular history, especially histories of California. The first kind of book is pretty specific to what I’m working on and tends to be works whose main job is to inform. I read a second kind of book because I want to see how different people are making and telling stories (writing). I read one kind of book because I’m interested in a topic and want to mine it for details, context or ideas (reporting). As a journalist, I’m always doing two things: Reporting and writing.

Vampires in the lemon grove meaning