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February 15, 2007
I Am What I Read
My eternal battle for bettering my brain...
I was going through my mail the other day and realized I must fit some specific demographic. On the table in front of me was an issue of the New York Review of Books (I got a free subscription when I renewed my Salon.com premium membership), a Newsweek, Wired Magazine (it’s been showing up lately and I have no idea why since I never subscribed to it), a letter from Greenpeace and a Fredrick’s of Hollywood catalog. The day before I’d received my New Yorker, Atlantic Monthly, a delivery of books from Amazon.com and a Lillian Vernon catalog. I subscribed to a year of Harper’s, considered adding The Economist to my stack of reading and, despite my initial reservations, I've come to enjoy the pithiness of The Week.
My magazines say I’m a socially aware, well-read individual who likes flashy lingerie and knickknacks—except I’ve never purchased anything from either Fredrick’s or Lillian and I can only manage to make it through one entire piece in the New York Review of Books per issue, if that much. (Hey, there’s only so much brain fiber one person can take.) But underneath it all, it’s a slightly different story. (Theme week alert! And it ties in nicely with the title of my debut novel. What a coincidence!)
As much as I brighten when I do find a New Yorker in my mail box what I’d really like to have my mail carrier deliver is an US Weekly or a thick juicy issue InStyle. If I was going to go all out I’d admit to wanting something truly tawdry like Star or even (dare I say it?) OK! along with an Allure to temper the artificial sugar rush.
There was a time when I didn’t care what my reading material said about me or did to me. I subscribed to about 20 magazines, including three fitness titles but they would all be set aside for my most guilty of guilty pleasures, US Magazine. Every Thursday I’d walk with a spring in my step because I knew a glossy treat was on its way, chock full of colorful pictures, useless news and depth free in-depth features on the celebrity crises du jour. So what if the rush would only last 15 minutes? I savored every second of it, forcing myself to read the magazine page by page, from front to back, to make it worth the death of the innocent tree carcass it was printed on.
At one point I even wished they ran letters to the editor so I’d have more to read before I realized US Magazine isn’t that type of publication. It’s the kind of magazine you’re happy to find at the dentist office, intact with no random pages ripped out, or save for a hot bubble bath after a stressful day. Really, two occasions not very conducive to writing an irate letter to the editor protesting the coverage of Jessica Simpson and her creepy pimp-daddy.
But that was the old me. In a fit of brain deterioration anxiety, I purged myself of all my fun magazines. The new me reads well-written exposés about the world water crises and likes it. The new me has squashed the old me’s interest in who is dating who, who cheated with what and why everyone seems to be wearing this or that thing.
My mail box is proof that I’ve moved beyond my obsession with guilty, time wasting, invariably useless reads. My recycling bin, now crammed with dog-eared issues of respected magazines and journals, is a testament to how far I’ve come.
So what if I make a point of standing in the longest line at the grocery store so I can madly page through US, Star, OK! and the redundant Life & Style? What my mail carrier doesn’t know won’t hurt him.
This blog has been brought to you by Margo Candela’s Underneath It All, a novel about finding out who you really are and then trying to forget what you discovered.
Posted by Margo at 6:00 AM | Comments (3)
Comments
I used to LOVE getting my people magazine for the same reasons! Then, being the self-conscious girl that I am, I began wondering what other people were thinking about me when they saw that I read pop culture instead of Money Magazine or the New Yorker. I cancelled my subscription and NOW read people.com everyday online. No paper trail. Works for me!
Posted by: Katy at February 15, 2007 10:10 AM
Ooh, the evil self-improvement regime. I think you need to subscrib to US just as a palate cleanser between the New York Review of Books and Atlantic Monthly.
The LC Eileen
Posted by: The LC Eileen ![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.literarychicks.com/nav-commenters.gif)
at February 15, 2007 11:02 AM
Oh, the dilemma of what magazines to read and which ones to subscribe.
I have cut down on my own subscriptions, since I find that my gym has a stack of magazines that turnover quickly and have a wide variety of popular themes. So I grab a magazine there, and prop it on the treadmill, and read while treading. However, these magazines tend to be on the light side of things.
BTW, awhile ago, I remember reading about the author, Tom Robbins (he wrote "Another Roadside Attraction"). He said he read a wide variety of periodicals to brainstorm for ideas for his writing, and that he and his family would visit the local public library every Thursday evening - his kids and wife would go look for books - and that was his night for reading magazines at the library.
So they had a "family outing night", at the same time that TR was getting some magazine reading done,too.
I thought that was a good routine. I keep saying I should do the same, but I have yet to have that discipline every week.
Posted by: Lucy S. at February 15, 2007 10:23 PM
