i’m quite illiterate, but i read a lot

things i look forward to every week:

sunday ny times

nytimes magazine

newsweek

the new yorker

 

why i actually look forward to them:

sunday ny times: sunday styles –> wedding announcements & socialite pictures. i look (frequently in vain) for vassar grads, judge everyone else, and take note of ages to gauge how much longer i have before i need to start worrying. 

nytimes magazine: the ethicist, questions for…, the real estate pages, and occasionally actual articles. but really, only occasionally. and i don’t like the ethicist just because he spoke at vassar’s commencement. i was one of, like, 20 people who was actually thrilled by the announcement that he would be our speaker.

newsweek: conventional wisdom, perspectives, sometimes the articles if they aren’t too long, sometimes anna quindlen.

the new yorker: umm… the cartoons? i can’t remember the last time i actually read anything other than the real estate ads. 

but my total lack of sophistication pays off sometimes, because while the vast majority of the [few] articles i [occasionally] read in these periodicals are informative, enlightening and inevitably depressing, i quite often stumble upon things in the previously mentioned features that make my day/week/month.

case in point, this week’s newsweek’s perspectives page (for those of you who are too busy reading the important articles to condescend to read perspectives, or those of you who are philistines and don’t even PRETEND to read newsweek, or for those of you who read time (god help you), perspectives is where they have political cartoons and noteworthy quotes from politicians/celebrities/normal people from the previous week):

 ”I love this rug.”

- former President Bill Clinton to George W. Bush, at a White House luncheon for all 5 living Presidents

wah. wah.