Deathsnow Challenge: Beat the ‘New Yorker’ backlog

When I was in grad school, one of my instructors assigned the class to read The New Yorker each week. Most of us subscribed, many of us got hooked. My weekly commute is – conveniently – about one New Yorker long, when Metro is behaving itself. Which has been great – the magazine fits neatly into my purse, and I get to maintain that smug sense of self satisfaction that comes with feeling reasonably well-informed.

It was a good system for several years. Then a bunch of stuff started interfering (trains running in a nauseating manner that was not conducive to reading, that damn iPhone having so much fun in it), and I fell behind.

And here we are – with two feet of snow on the ground, and five magazines to get through.

January 11, 2010

Chainsaw class? Phyllis Diller? A great start to the issue, but I’m afraid I’m just not going to get through the big economics feature. Too antsy watching the state repeatedly plow us back in after Spouse shovels us out. Stupid state. Meanwhile, there’s a really interesting article about the fountain architect who brought us the spectacle at the Bellagio, and another (and very long) about Justice Sotomayor. The review of Elizabeth Gilbert’s new book (Committed) is way better than I thought her first book – which was kind of solipsistic and itch-provoking.

January 18, 2010

The Sure Thing: Oh, Malcolm Gladwell. Your analysis of what makes a (wildly) successful and predatory entrepreneur is as engaging as it is useless to me. No way will I be able to just balls my way through making a multimillion dollar company into a multibillion dollar enterprise. Guess I’ll have to stick with my day job.

Udder Madness: I think only Jews from New York use the word “homunculus.”

Rodarte looks cool, Ted Olsen and David Bois are unlikely allies in the fight for marriage equality

January 25, 2010

I usually don’t get into the fiction so much, but “The Trailhead” was pretty great – and ants are totally violent, but not as violent as King Lear (what with the eye gouging and assassinating and stuff), a review of a half-assed production of which follows. Also, the tricky thing about memoirs, in addition to mortifying friends and family, is that so many of them turn out to be embellished or just not true. On the other hand, no one really seems to care if things “happened,” as long as they “feel honest.”

Didn’t make it the whole way through, but this is great progress!

Good God, I’m dull.