Things I Look at / Read

‘Tis the season for Top Ten Lists!

It seems like just about everyone is compiling their collections of favorite books/albums/headlines from 2007, so in between sitting around my folks’ house in Michigan, reading, going out with Vlad, and drinking Brandy Alexanders with my mother, I’ve put together an end-of-the-year list of my own. To keep it from turning into My Top 500, I left out any and all books or literary journals, but without further caveat, here it is, in no particular order:

The Top Ten Things I Regularly Look At / Read

The Believer - Concerned with literary endeavors of all kinds, The Believer’s seductively-matte, ad-free pages are consistently brimming with witty and well-researched articles about what’s going on in contemporary literature & art. Each issue regularly includes Nick Hornby’s monthly column titled “Stuff I’ve Been Reading,” big-name interviews of authors, musicians, artists, and critics like Michael Ondaatje and Panda Bear, a few page-long (usually praising) appraisals of new books, and Sedaratives - an always-ridiculous monthly advice column. The bulk of the magazines content comes in its articles and essays. With topics like “The Visual Erotics of Mini-Marriages: The Appeal of Tiny Nuptials Between Children, Stuffed Kittens, and Other Small, Cute Things” and “Frog Speech: The Actual History of Synthetic Larynges,” The Believer’s range of subject matter combines eclecticism with just enough obscurity and esoterica to satisfy even the most culturally curious of readers. Articles and essays are prefaced with an intriguingly sprawling list of topics to be discussed (ex. “Oulipo Ends Where the Work Begins” DISCUSSED: Animal House, A Paragraph of Proust, Old Corned-Beef, Stubbly Gauchos, Jungle Chess, Pure Potential, François Le Lionnais, Hervé Le Tellier, The National Puzzlers’ League, Princeton, David Blaine, Bilingual Puns, Free-Thinking Dogs, Extraneous Jazz, First Sentences, Short Naps, Gibberish, Italo Calvino, Non-Writers, Potential Cooking, Graph Theory, Combinatorics, The Realm of the Actual, Indiana, Hilarity, A Sarcophagus Full of Bees, Empedocles), embodying the characteristic non-linearity and mix-and-match experimentation that supply much of The Believer’s charming surprise. Also be sure to check out gems like this winner of the Convergences Contest (a call for resembling images inspired by Lawrence Weschler’s Book of Convergences) and the List of Lists found on McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, a lit/humor website produced by The Believer’s publishing house, McSweeney’s.

The New York Times - Not only will The Times keep you informed on what’s going on at home, in Iraq, and elsewhere, but its later pages (especially the Science and Travel sections) offer quick, often-mindless escapes from many of the bleak problems found on the front page. There’s always something entertaining to be found in their list of Most E-mailed Articles, and I read the Arts section regularly, sometimes honoring the recommendations of Times film critics A.O. Scott (click to see his own top ten list) and Manohla Dargis over those of friends and family. And though I often tire of page after page of advertisements for insanely expensive flats and overpriced jewelry, much of this can be avoided by reading the newpaper’s content online (though on nytimes.com and especially in the Times Magazine you’ll still regularly find less-than-newsworthy coverage of celebs like Natalie Portman and Ivanka Trump). Still, in spite of its blatant cosmopolitanism, I think we can all agree that wide distribution, international coverage, and high standards of journalism have made the New York Times one of the definitive American sources for world news.

23/6 - “Where outraged people go in order to get more outraged before going to have dinner.” Combining the sarcasm of The Onion with the opinion and analysis of sister site The Huffington Post, 23/6 is the news source to which I turn when I’m feeling even more disenchanted and cynical about the state of American politics than usual. Admittedly, its opinions are far from “fair and balanced” (their tagline reads, “Some of the news, most of the time.”), but with headlines like, “Rush Limbaugh hates Hillary’s wrinkles — maybe she should fill them with fat, like he does,” “President Bush to surprise foreign leaders with international ‘pop-in,’” “Thought Process Flowchart: King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia,” and prominently displayed links to articles from Dickpedia, an encyclopedic catalogue of 23/6’s pick of the world’s biggest dicks, I can laugh about the foibles of our planet’s political leaders instead of cry!

Pitchfork Media - It’s one of those love to hate ‘em/hate to love ‘em type-of conundrums. I love music. I love playing music. I love listening to new music, and I love that Pitchfork hands me a decent recommendation or two every single week. I also look forward to Pitchfork’s end of the year lists to catch up on good stuff I might’ve missed - this year I’ve probably listened to at least forty of their Top 50 Albums of 2007, and I really liked a lot of them. But Pitchfork isn’t always the most courageous with their reviewing (I would venture to say that two-thirds of the albums they review fall somewhere between a 6.0 and an 8.0 on their sometimes-very-arbitrary-seeming, decimal-inclusive rating scale), and I think I threw up in my mouth a little bit when their rating of Radiohead’s In Rainbows was “fill-in-the-blank,” a cutesy play on the band’s decision to let listeners pick their own price for a downloadable version of the album. So if you’re looking for a second opinion, you might try cokemachineglow (a younger, slightly less-extensive, but more modest music review site - though frankly, I’m not sure how often they tend to strongly disagree with Pitchfork), and for reviews of a wider variety of genres (including classical), check out AllMusic Guide’s Allmusic blog.

The New Yorker - An iconic item of American culture, The New Yorker seems to successfully and accessibly blur the line that separates pop culture and high art. It offers some worthwhile cultural commentary, literary review, and reportage, and I especially appreciate the emphasis The New Yorker places on presenting its readers with decent modern fiction (this week Ray Carver) on a weekly basis. This being said, I sometimes think I get more out of the magazine from perusing its list of NYC’s gallery opening’s and film screenings (and later googling the websites of these artists and filmmakers) than I do from the magazine’s actual content. If you’re like me (and this lady), the New Yorker arrives in your mailbox each week like clockwork, and, just as routinely, you continue to read each issue even though you often hate it. I almost never like their poetry selections (crummy work by big names - though Paul Muldoon could correct the magazine’s poetic course by putting in a little more innovation and effort into his new appointment as The New Yorker’s Poetry Editor than he did into writing that god-awful introduction for the version of Best American Poetry he edited in 2005) and also, unfortunately, the New Yorker continues to employ the Ann Coulter of indie-rock, Sasha Frere-Jones, as their pop music critic.

A self-proclaimed supplier of “mad love and raw justice,” Frere-Jones’ reviews unfailingly include sharp insights, such as “[Caetano] Veloso made the notes disappear by backing away from the microphone as he sang.” He calls Radiohead “baby-making music.” He cited Animal Collective’s Strawberry Jam as “the musical equivalent of a painting by de Kooning” (that’s deep, man). In late October he slammed the state of contemporary indie-rock as being monotonous, vigorless, arrhythmic, and precious - claims that were framed by his personal anecdote of a live Arcade Fire performance where he “didn’t hear what [he] really wanted to hear . . . a stretch of raucous sing-alongs, a bit of swing, some empty space, and palpable bass frequencies—in other words, attributes of African-American popular music.” Have you tried hip-hop, Sasha? Basically, he irritates me because I can’t tell whether he’s a pretentious bombast who thinks he’s actually flaunting some unique insight, or whether he’s just an idiot whose main boasting point is his ability to hold his current job in spite of a pitiably extreme lack of actual musical knowledge. So yeah, I read the New Yorker a lot.

Gawker - A kind-of ultra-hateful, Manhattan-centric US Weekly for anyone who wouldn’t be caught dead perusing tabloids in the grocery store checkout. Frankly, I don’t really care about what celebrity was recently spotted on the corner of 14th and Broadway, but honestly, who doesn’t love laughing at ludicrously-clad uber-hipsters on Gawker’s weekly photo-column Blue States Lose (my favorite: “Hipster or Halloween Costume?“). And also, how can I not love Gawker when their articles so often perfectly paraphrase the thoughts running through my own head (like this one about Slate film critic Dana Stevens recommending Korean horror film The Host . . . which you should all watch)? Since Gawker will readily slam pretty much any cultural, socio-economical, or political segment of the world population with equal nastiness, its often good to read when you’re feeling superior to everyone else. But as much as I like to make fun of the next guy, I usually turn to Gawker for a strong dose of their typographically-organized self-loathing: after all, the only thing Gawker hates more than those who belittle New York City are idiotic New Yorkers themselves.

Popular Mechanics - Looking through everything else on my list of most-read periodicals, Popular Mechanics might seem like a bit of a dark horse. Well, if you’re surprised, don’t be . . . not only does Popular Mechanics satiate my frequent cravings for scientific reading, it consistently focuses on improving its readers quality of life. Popular Mechanics offers instruction on how to fix things (and seriously, who doesn’t want to acquire more useful life-skills, like changing your oil, fixing a dead outlet, or maneuvering out of a skid), it keeps readers up-to-date on how the 2008 presidential candidates weigh in on issues of science, environment, and technology, articles like this one about reducing your waste imprint emphasize our individual impact on the environment, and updates on how technological breakthroughs are making the world a better place to live (like this one about efficient cookstoves for refugees in Darfur) offer hope enough to keep my sometimes-overwhelming pessimism in check. So if you’re feeling extra cynical, check out the online version of Popular Mechanics to learn how to build your own compost bin, or for other tips on environmentally-friendly living, also be sure to check out National Geographic’s Green Guide.

UBUWEB - A seemingly endless archive of avant-garde audio, writing, and film, the non-commercial UBUWEB offers free access to intellectual materials that are otherwise only marginally distributed. Watch a biography/critical piece on Jorge Luis Borges, see short films by Dziga Vertov and Bas Jan Ader, or watch Merce Cunningham’s company dance to Eno’s soundscapes in Pond Way. Read work by Richard Serra in UBUWEB’s Anthology of Conceptual Writing, listen to music by Tim Hecker or try Scriabin’s stunningly beautiful Prelude in D-flat major as it was recorded for issue 2 of Aspen magazine. If you can understand French, listen to lectures by Roland Barthes, or to audio pieces by Antonin Artaud (again in French), or Alvin Lucier, or Marina Abramovic. Hear the sound poetry of Henri Chopin and Rick Moody, radio pieces by DJ Spooky, listen to James Joyce read from Ulysses and Ezra Pound read from the Cantos. With this site on the list, I probably should have also included “Things I Listen To” in the title, but then I would have had to find space here for NPR, Transom, podcasts of This American Life, WFMU, and WCBN.

Slate - What isn’t there to love about Slate? Its articles cover everything from news, to food, to arts & literature, never failing to offer that deadpan cynicism on which I rely (as in “Hunting Shops are Having a Terrible Year. Uh Oh.” and “Kwanzaa is Made Up, But Beneficial), and they even have the balls to write a regular column about what’s worth reading in Other Magazines (or I guess you could sort through all of it yourself on Drudge Report, but seriously, who can handle that nauseatingly-clinical, three-column layout?). With extensive coverage of the 2008 Presidential Campaigns, thought-provoking literary and cultural commentary, regular articles by Christopher Hitchens, frequent film reviews that often offer a alternative opinion to those in The Times, and a weekly poem selected by Robert Pinsky, Slate’s frequently-updated segments hit all of my soft spots.

Harper’s - Potentially the only publication with which I become increasingly pleased upon reading each new issue. Truly a general-interest magazine (given that you have at least a slight degree of intellectual curiosity and an interest in learning about the world), the variety of topics explored in Harper’s is so wide-ranging that I won’t even try to list them all. Subscriptions are cheap, the magazine’s writing is top-notch and consistently challenging, and I am generally impressed with the passionate opinions offered each month in Harper’s Notebook (former editor Lewis Lapham’s January 2008-issue crack about outsourcing America’s political infrastructure was excellent). Harper’s Index and Findings accessibly present a smattering of often-hilarious though sometimes-disturbing factoids (”the average American woman will have 0.9 abortions in her lifetime”) that are easy to remember and quote, and the Readings section consistently offers a bizarre collection of tidbits that always seem somehow representative of the current state of our world, despite their clear position on the furthest outskirts of cultural marginalia.

I’m heading off to Chicago this weekend to ring in the dawn of 2007 Part 2 (a.k.a. 2008). Plans include dancing, joining the Polar Bear Club for a Lake Michigan swim on New Years Day, and other general funness/celebration. Edward-Champagne-Bottle-Hands, here I come!