Her entry begins:
I read a mixture of fiction and non-fiction, the latter often as research for whatever I’m writing.About Everything About You, from the publisher:
This is what brought me to Selfie by Will Storr. It’s ostensibly about our current selfie-taking celebrity culture, but I was surprised to find it a far-reaching study that chronicles how the concept of ‘the individual’ came to be revered, from ancient Greece through to American neoliberalism.
Putting the self first is a western - rather than universal - cultural tendency, and it’s fascinating to read about how research was wilfully misused to argue that high self-esteem would solve all social ills – violence, drug abuse, teenage pregnancy etc – so that the majority of US primary schools put programmes in place to boost it. Of course, low self-esteem isn’t great either, but...[read on]
THINK TWICE BEFORE YOU SHARE YOUR LIFE ONLINE.Visit Heather Child's website.
Freya has a new virtual assistant. It knows what she likes, knows what she wants and knows whose voice she most needs to hear: her missing sister's.
It adopts her sister's personality, recreating her through a life lived online. But this virtual version of her sister knows things it shouldn't be possible to know. It's almost as if the missing girl is still out there somewhere, feeding fresh updates into the cloud. But that's impossible. Isn't it?
The Page 69 Test: Everything About You.
Writers Read: Heather Child.
--Marshal Zeringue
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