Steve Jobs Review

My review of Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson was published in Politico.ie on 17 February. It is entitled "Apphole," and can be read here.

As an undergraduate I reviewed films for Trinity News, and I worked as a film critic for the now defunct Dublin Events Guide between my second and fourth years of college. While I also wrote occasional pieces for The Chronicle while at Duke University (full list can be found here), as well as a sometime column, entitled "The Steering Column," on car-related topics for The Trident, a now defunct student newspaper at Washington and Lee University, I missed writing reviews of books and films. I missed writing about culture. At one point I offered my services to an online magazine in the hopes of writing film reviews for them. They said that I could write about celebrities, but in the end I never took them up on it.

My foray into writing about popular culture earlier this year – my essay on Stieg Larsson's best-selling trilogy, Millennium, published in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and Philosophy (see blog entry below) – was hugely enjoyable, even if the final product had to be shortened significantly in order to be included in the edited volume. It led me to write another essay, on Ride with The Devil, an overlooked film by Taiwanese director Ang Lee, for a collection of essays entitled The Philosophy of Ang Lee, which should come out some time in 2013. I decided that it was time to write something for an online magazine. However, I also decided that books are better suited to serious reviews, and that non-fiction is a more appropriate subject matter for such reviews. I chose the new biography of Steve Jobs, which I was eager to read. I was happy with what Politico.ie did with the review, turning it a critical notice, with its own title. I was also delighted with the way they incorporated photos and YouTube videos. Truly, I have seen the future of book reviewing.