Saturday’s Impulse Shopping:
Yesterday I was reading a friend’s copy of the Nation, and I started feeling guilty about not subscribing to some of my favorite magazines and thereby contributing to their decline and demise. I browsed their websites determined to spend at least some of my stimulus money propping up quality journalism.
I discovered that, yes, I can afford to subscribe to a couple of rags, so they’ll be piling up next to my bed unread soon. But the real point is that I discovered the recently launched New Yorker Book Club. In their own words:
A spinoff of The Book Bench, the magazine’s blog on all matters literary, The Book Club will be an ongoing collaboration between our editors and writers and our audience.
Each month, we will tackle a different book, of the past or the present. The selections will be eclectic, but will share one main criterion: they resist easy answers….
This isn’t the first online book club, but it might actually motivate me to close the damn Google Reader and to consume book cover-to-cover. Why?
First of all the bait is great: April’s selection is Down and Out in Paris in London by George Orwell.
Second, the language describing the club is just so damn endearing. I didn’t know such experiences existed, but I desperately want “Adventures in Communal Reading.”
Finally, this book club gives me something Oprah never could: Essays by smarty-pants New Yorker staff writers like George Packer to accompany my reading adventure…
I ran to my local bookstore and dropped thirty bucks on Down and Out… and next months selection Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi by Geoff Dyer.
I’ve already plowed through half of Down and Out… so I’m optimistic. I’ll let you al know how it goes.