January 2013

I will list the whole month here I hope....... being optimistic. I can do this!

Because they were piling up UNREAD we switched to digital....now they fill my in box! (But there are wondrous extras and discussions.)

I wonder..... it might be worth switching.........

January 7
One of those issues that has good article after good article AND the best story I've read in here in awhile.

- British craze for Danish tv shows - describes three of them, two police procedurals, one about government - haven't seen any of them, looks like one is being remade for an American audience, but not set in Scandinavia. (The Bridge) - about a murder that has two jurisdictions, Sweden and Denmark as the body ends up on both sides of the 'border' on the bridge...... I do at least know about the bridge from reading Mankell....
-Post-Sandy - cities needing new strategies for emergencies - some of the best ones involve developing community networks, have nothing to do with technology.
-Person I've Never Heard of - a pickpocket/magician named Apollo Robbins. He studies, among other things, how our attention wanders and can be diverted.
-Daniel Mendelsohn on his correspondence with Mary Renault. Terrific piece! The ending got a little something-or-other but it didn't damage the rest of it.
-Rivka Galchen's story - "The Lost Order" was riveting - layered and complicated. Really good. I might even tear it out. I've reread it a couple of times. Everything a short story should be!

If any of you have a stack deep enough, try to find the piece from (I believe) November 2001 (gulp) entitled "Virtual love". If you do, and if you find it interesting, write to me for some follow-up. Cheers to all! -- Goddard

>5 HarryMacDonald: Not flagging you this time but be advised I will if you post again.

January 14
-only skimmed the Muslim Brotherhood piece.
-the Aviv on sex abuse was illuminating, creepy enough to be hard to read attentively.
-McPhee on organizing his notes into a piece - a demonstration certainly of how a writer found 'his' way of doing things. It certainly works for him. Most important is not to get caught up in any other person's way - you can borrow and try out, but then you just have to do your own thing. The program he uses just gives me the heebie-jeebies to even contemplate.
-Trevor - well - he can write, but I thought the subject matter not that interesting and also rather bizarre if it was meant to be set in the 1980's.
-piece on St. Francis of Assisi was quite fascinating. I had no idea he has been written about so obsessively.

Nice Galway Kinnell poem, well not nice, but good. Did not 'get' the Billy Collins, or rather I think I did get it, but it didn't work for me.

I think I only read the McPhee piece in that issue, because I would read anything he writes and becasue the subject was interesting. He has a follow-up piece I read in a later issue that talks about the differences between different drafts of the same article -- I hope I'm right in sensing a book coming out of all of this!

Oh dear, you're going to make me miss my New Yorkers, which I've deliberately let pile up this year.

January 21
One of those 'must read' issues, lots of good stuff.
-Times Square. 'Snowhetta" (the o has a line through it) is the Norwegian firm hired to try to 'fix' Times Square and make it a place that everyone, tourists and locals alike, will want to walk around and be in. Their previous work sounds very very good.
-Shouts and Murmurs - "Our Own Private Downton Abbey" was quite funny.
-James Wood on 'becoming' his father - listening to music, did not really resonate with me, but readable.
-Letter from Jerusalem. Oh joy, here comes the next generation.
-In the 'Person you never heard of' category - the founder of the MONA museum in Tasmania, David Walsh. Fascinating and strange.
-Good Tessa Hadley story. I'm fond of stories where nothing much happens, eg it's all internal, so I liked it.
-Elena Ferrante sounds worth checking out!

In re #6. Sibyx: what is your problem with my post here? I referred people to an article, then offered additional info about the material in that piece. I am not selling anything, promoting anything, indeed, doing anything except trying to make people aware of a very interesting story, about which I happen to have some interesting recent info. Please explain, and/or lighten-up. Thanks, -- Goddard

HarryMacdonald/Goddard - What I object to is that you posted impulsively without, as far as I can tell, bothering to check out the New Yorker Group to see what it's about and how or where you could appropriately post your comment and maybe get the response you are looking for.

In re #12. Lucy, thank you for the Reply. I suppose you are right, although of-course, you leave yourself an out by conceding "as far as I can tell". Also, you assume that I wanted some specific response which I wanted. Nope: I JUST WANTED PEOPLE TO BE AWARE OF AN INTERESTING ARTICLE. The only "error", I concede, is thinking that people might have a stack of New Yorkers from earlier than the time-period you're discussing. Even so, that variation certainly would seem to be OK given the back half of the Group's title, "unread magazines". Honestly, this is nit-picking pushed to the molecular level. Or, as the old song says, if you cry about a nickel, you'll die about a dime.
Truly sorry to violate what you regard as the purity of this Group, but in a year in LT's various Groups I have seen great warmth, erudition, and the making of real friendships (to name only three positives), as well as outright slander, overt fraud, self-involvement verging on paranoia, as well as grotesque obscenity. Without suggesting that you are responsible for any of those, I thought we did it all here, but now find that I am a scoundrel because of the date on a magazine-cover! And this from another resident of Vermont, America's last Cortically Emancipated Zone!! Peace to ya, truly, but save the red flag for the revolution (if any) -- Goddard

Final issue of the month January 28
-Honestly? The only article that seriously interested me was about the guy who puts dinosaurs together who got in big trouble for selling a t-rex lookalike (t-baatar) illegally obtained from Mongolia - which country has recently decided their dino bones are a potential asset......
Otherwise the choices were
-reforming the filibuster. Good idea, but I couldn't read much beyond the general idea.
-S&M ho hum
-Caracas. Actually this one was kind of interesting. One has to immediately get on line to look up this Tower of David which Chavez built to be some kind of monument and didn't complete and is now 'the tallest slum' in the world, a dubious honor.
-The story, "Mayfly" was terrific, once again, one of those 'about nothing' stories I am so fond of.
-military spending. OW.