Lost at Sea, Jon Ronson

Having been a fan of Jon Ronson's writing for years, I was thrilled to read this collection of articles. They do go back some time, so some were familiar, but I loved the way they were grouped, and of course many were new to me. Especially strong entries included Santa's Little Conspirators, about the Alaskan town of North Pole, and Blood Sacrifice, about people looking to donate organs. As always Ronson finds the unusual, and writes about it with humor, wit, and empathy.

This is Running For Your Life: Essays, Michelle Orange

A singularly talented voice.
Michelle Orange's propulsively readable essays take the reader across the globe, and through time, but always returning to define here and now.
Her writing offers insights both into pop culture, as in her beautiful and grateful piece on "The Uses of Nostalgia and Some thoughts on Ethan Hawke's Face", and into her own background, but always with a wider perspective. The melancholy and elegiacal "One Senior, Please", about her grandmother's fading days is both intensely personal and a wider view of how geriatric people are viewed and treated in our society, and Orange uses film to frame her experiences.
This is the kind of writing that makes one's hair stand on end.
Brilliant, thought-provoking, and memorable.