Personal
Photo by Kristina Barker
Bio
David Montgomery is a political and general assignment reporter for the Rapid City Journal newspaper in Rapid City, South Dakota. There he covers elections and state and federal government in print and on a blog, as well as covering breaking news and features on weekends.
Previously, David spent two years as a reporter for the Capital Journal newspaper in Pierre, South Dakota, where he covered federal, state and local government, wrote general assignment stories, founded and ran a blog and helped produce the newspaper.
David graduated with honors from Grinnell College in 2008 with a degree in political science. While studying at Grinnell he served as news editor and editor-in-chief for the student newspaper, the Scarlet and Black.
In his life David has lived in Nebraska, Iowa, Illinois, and South Dakota, plus shorter stints in Seattle and Aix-en-Provence, France.
About
David enjoys learning new things and debating them with other people. He is an RSS junkie who is constantly reading news, analysis and opinion online.
He spends his free time reading books and news articles, playing computer games and listening to music.
Music, Movies and Books
Popular music
Many white, college-educated suburbanites like to say they like to listen to all music except for rap and country. David is like that, except he likes rap and country, too. That’s not to say he likes all music — there’s plenty of artists and songs he’s not into. Generally speaking, David dislikes songs with misogynistic or otherwise offensive lyrics (though vulgarity isn’t inherently objectionable), songs that are overly distorted or un-melodic, songs about things he dislikes like “dancing in a club” and pop songs that became massively popular before he discovered them.
He’s a big fan of songs whose lyrics tell strong stories, of vocal harmony, of traditional instrumentation, and of songs that are great to sing along to at the top of one’s lungs. (Not that he’d ever do that.)
Some artists David likes include Bruce Springsteen, Bob Dylan, Peter Gabriel, the Beatles and Mark Knopfler/Dire Straits among classic rockers and Arcade Fire, Carbon Leaf and The National among more contemporary rock groups. Folk and bluegrass groups like Great Big Sea, Nickel Creek, Dave Carter & Tracy Grammer, Townes van Zandt and Mumford & Sons frequently pop up in his iTunes, as do classic folk and folk-rock groups like Simon & Garfunkel and Peter, Paul & Mary. David also enjoys hip-hop artists like Atmosphere, K’Naan, Mos Def and Dessa, nerd-pop groups like Barenaked Ladies and Fountains of Wayne and a wide assortment of foreign-language artists from the French rock band Matmatah to the Mexican acoustic guitar duo Rodrigo y Gabriela. (World music collections from Putumayo and others are also excellent.)
Read here about some of David’s favorite albums.
See David’s listening history at his last.fm page.
Read the rest of David’s works on music here.
Classical music
Some of the greatest musical works ever written are classical. J.S. Bach, Johannes Brahms and Ludwig van Beethoven — the three German B’s — would top David’s list of composers. Particularly favorite pieces include Brahm’s “German Requiem,” R. Vaughan Williams’ “Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis,” Bach’s “Unaccompanied Cello Suites” and “Mass in B Minor,” and Thomas Tallis’s “Spem in alium.”
Movies
Big action movies and mass-market comedies are enjoyable enough, but David’s favorite movies tend to be ambitious epics, imaginative fantasies and creative, expectations-defying genre pieces.
Some of his top picks: Citizen Kane, Lawrence of Arabia, Master and Commander, Pan’s Labyrinth, The Lord of the Rings, Spirited Away, No Country For Old Men, Millions, Children of Men, The Princess Bride, The Incredibles, Once
Read here about David’s favorite movies of the 2000s.
Read all of David’s works on film here.
Fiction books
As a child, David read epic fantasy novels to an unhealthy degree, and he still has a soft spot for the genre. He enjoys historical fiction (particularly military) and stories that play on myth and archetypes. He’s just getting in to graphic novels and needs to do a better job reading classic literature.
Some of his favorite works of fiction are Ender’s Game, Calvin and Hobbes, Pride and Prejudice, Watchmen, Harry Potter, Jonathan Stange and Mr. Norrell, Good Omens, American Gods, Sherlock Holmes and The Princess Bride.
Non-fiction books
The majority of David’s reading these days is non-fiction. His favorite type of book — and the kind he would like to write himself one day — are the books that take a broad, multi-disciplinary look at a single subject, such as Simon Winchester’s “Krakatoa,” Graham Robb’s “The Discovery of France” and Jared Diamond’s “Guns, Germs and Steel.” He likes reading about a wide variety of subjects, chiefly history and philosophy but also science, psychology, religion, economics, sports and politics.
Among his favorite authors and books are Albert Camus, Alvin Toffler, Richard Dawkins’ “The Selfish Gene,” “Guns, Germs and Steel,” John Locke and Paul Berman’s “Terror and Liberalism.”
For a more systematic list of the most important books David has read click here.
Go here to read all David’s writings on books.
