What You Should be Reading
By Betty Haynes, ACN Board Member
In last month’s Byline, I mentioned how my daughter, Claire’s love of books, rekindled my own love for reading. I reached out to fellow ACN members to learn which books and authors they find notable.
Holly Spangler
Elements of style and Charlotte’s Web by E.B. White
Anna Quindlen
Chelsea Dinterman
The Anthropocene Reviewed by John Green. The whole premise of the book is John Green rating things like Diet Dr Pepper and QWERTY keyboards on a five-star scale. I love how he took a seemingly simple premise and created heartfelt essays. And it’s a great reminder that there’s so much love and hope still in the world if you let yourself look for it!
Bill Spiegel
Sean Dietrich, the keynote speaker at the 2025 Ag Media Summit, said one of his favorite writers was Mike Royko, a columnist from Chicago. I read a lot of Royko’s stuff when I could (pre-Internet). I read tons of newspapers, from the two county weeklies to our regional daily, plus the Topeka Capital Journal and Kansas City Star. I loved reading columns, and when I started working at Farm Progress, those last two papers were ones I read daily. Topeka had a sports columnist named Bob Hentzen, and the Star had Jason Whitlock and Joe Posnanski, arguably two of the most influential sports writers in the nation. I was a big fan of Joe Posnanski and still am. He is an author, columnist, blogger and writes thousands of words each day. It’s incredible. He has a unique ability to write with personality, humanity, opinion and fact – mainly about sports. But occasionally he writes about music, or his love of ball point pens, or his family. His writing makes me want to be better. Not just a better writer, but a better human.
Katie Knapp
AP style guide and Elements of Style are the musts before you can pass go. Past that, I’ll have to do a little thinking. I do read a lot of articles with my imaginary red pen in han,d though! Like, I can’t read a magazine or newspaper article about anything without also thinking about how the author transitioned between topics or sources or what questions I was left with.
Courtney Girgis
One of my favorite books is Bob Goff’s “Love Does.” It’s a quick, easy read because Goff is such a good storyteller. He breaks the rules of writing well, builds intriguing characters and inspires us to live a purpose-filled life full of fun and whimsy. It’s my go-to when I feel stuck and need encouragement to keep pursuing big dreams.
– Haynes is a freelance ag journalist and photographer from Petersburg, Illinois. Find her at www.midwesternlens.com