Becoming a Bryson fan.
But I don't want to make an apron.

A weekend of unfocused reading.

Nothing much to report today, as my reading this weekend was all over the map. (And I was indexing a middle-school book about the reality show The Hills*--which, dear God, kind of took away my appetite for reading for a while.)

I started two books about food and sustainability, a humorous essay collection, an oral history about how Americans feel about love, and perused my latest New York magazine, so I'm mainly just waiting to see what "takes" and if I decide to finish any of them. The New York magazine was, once again, a home run out of the park, as it was the "design" issue and was jam-packed with real estate ads for New York City, which I love perusing. I actually found myself wondering what assets I could sell and where I could borrow the money for a $475,000 loft--that's right, an efficiency that isn't even a one-bedroom--in what I can only guess is a somewhat dodgier part of Manhattan. A girl can dream, right?

I also tried, once again, to read an issue of the magazine The Believer. Every now and then I try to like The Believer, because literary types all seem to, and it's published by McSweeney's, which is Dave Eggers's publishing concern. I used to love Dave Eggers, and I still do, in an intense ex-college-boyfriend kind of way. But nothing he's written since his first memoir, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, has really turned me on. Still. But the fact remains I am not smart enough for this magazine, which sports headlines like "Noun versus adjective: do writers abandon lyricism for facts as they age?" and "Progress as a literal Mexicali prostitute: An El Centro native takes on William Vollmann's sprawling novelistic study of his troubled town." Sigh. I will have to look for another literary magazine, and perhaps one that bridges the gap between those who watch The Hills and take it seriously and those who can understand and appreciate the uber-literary references of The Believer.

*And who says work isn't educational? I now know, finally, who people like Heidi Montag, Whitney Port, Lauren Conrad, and Spencer Pratt are. Although I can't say that knowledge really makes me a richer person.

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