April 2012 New Yorker Reading

I'll start this off with the April 2 issue.

Christine Quinn profile -- Interesting enough, at least for me as a New Yorker, since it seems likely that she'll be our next mayor. I used to like her as a feisty woman (she's the first woman, and the first openly gay, City Council speaker) until she sold her soul to the devil by supporting Mayor Bloomberg's plan to temporarily overturn term limits so he could have a third term. (Just to be clear, I don't believe in term limits because I believe the voters should be able to decide whether to keep someone or throw him out, but term limits were passed by the voters and it isn't for the mayor to strike a deal to temporarily get rid of them just to suit his plans. It's what every dictator says: "the times are bad and you need me to stay.") Off of soapbox. This might not interest people outside NYC.

LBJ on 11/22/63 -- Couldn't put down this article by LBJ biographer/historian Robert Caro about the day of the assassination of JFK from Johnson's perspective. Might not be as compelling for people who don't remember that day and the LBJ presidency.

The Daily Mail -- read a few paragraphs and lost interest.
Fiction -- read the first few paragraphs and knew I wouldn't like it at all.
Book review -- review of a book about an evangelical congregation -- creepy.
Skipped other reviews.

Intriguing -- your summary is helping enthuse me to get going on April.

I am hopeful that April will be better than March!

That shouldn't be too hard.

Just what I was thinking, although I did read the Argentina article last night and thought it was fascinating, and sad, very sad.

I finished the April 2 issue on Friday - and also found the LBJ arricle impossible to put down - and I wasn't alive when it happened! I disageed witn the Hunger Games review but overall found much to enjoy in this issue!

Things are getting a bit precarious -- NYer #3 for April just turned up today and I haven't started any of the Aprils....... Live Dangerously!

I'm living dangerously with you. Midway through a book and that's all I've had time for lately. This is supposed to be a 2 Scientific American month also, toward my goal of catching up this year, and I haven't started.

Okay, so I took the April 2 NYer with me to my music weekend -- of course, all I did was read the cartoons and poems and page through what was in it and then the article about the evangelicals (extended book review).

-Christine Quinn, maybe next mayor of NYC, good to know something about her. Her grandmother, traveling in steerage, survived the Titanic by running like hell for a lifeboat.
-David Sedaris didn't convince me that it is ever fun to visit a dentist. (I go for a crown, in fact, this Thursday, which I have been putting off for wayyy too long).
-The Caro on the 'transition' the day of Kennedy's assassination was hair-raising, literally. A different angle on it all.
-Couldn't focus on the Royal Mail piece
-The short story was fair to middling, had some moments. Working a little too hard to be hip for my tastes.
-T.M. Luhrmann, an anthropologist joined a congregation of "Vineyarders" who have their own ideas about how to have a relationship with god, that is, at the very least quirky. They accepted her and it sounds from the review as if she managed to tread that edge with grace, between respect for the people and her own sharp observations.

1 down 4 to go, but I do feel better!

Yay you!

April 23 arrived today, and spurred me to finish reading April 2...

April 2
* Rebecca Mead re Christine Quinn: Not familiar to me, and not of immediate importance, but, well, you can kinda see the Titanic survivor passing through the generations.
* David Sedaris re dentists: Skipped.
* Robert Caro re JFK / LBJ transition: I didn't believe, reading comments above, that I'd get through this, but in fact I was riveted.
* Lauren Collins re Daily Mail: Sorta skimmed, was interested in the web site: "The site breaks all so-called 'usability rules'. It's user-friendly for normal people, not for Internet fanatics." So I looked. And it is indeed quite something: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/ushome/index.html, a cacophony of tabloid images, where to begin... but they got me... at the top of the page is this http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2133977/Carpenter-builds-incredible-egg-....
* David Denby re Hunger Games and Bully: Hunger Games watered down the fictional violence to get a PG-13 rating. Bully, a documentary about real kids in middle and high school, is kept from reaching similar kids by an R rating, because of a few words.
* Joan Acocella re When God Talks Back by T. M. Lurhmann: An anthropologist in the Vineyard Christian Fellowship. For some evangelicals, God is not unlike a stuffed Snoopy.
* Briefly Noted: Nothing of interest.
Skipped fiction, music, theater.

And I've finished April 9 and have one article to go in April 16... there is hope.

You're way ahead of me........ I seem to be having a relapse.

I'm now one article away from finishing April 23, and April 30 arrived this morning. I'll be away for several days, w/ internet access but w/o a decent keyboard, so documentation will have to wait, but April reading will be done on time.

Alas, this was to be a month of two Scientific Americans, and instead it has been zero. :-(

You are so far ahead of me! I am four behind, just like that, a snap of the fingers. It was nice while it lasted!

Well, I started reading April 30 today . . . I tend to work backwards so we'll see what happens. I also have months of New York Review of Books, which I'm hoping to start a thread for, but . . . I'd have to start reading them first!

I might..... read a NYer today, we'll see...... I haven't been in the mood.

The April 16th issue held my attention for several hours:

Patricia Mars -DEPT. OF TRAVEL: "You're Welcome: The Couch-Surfing Fraternity".

Daniel Mendelsohn - POPULAR CHRONICLES: "Unsinkable: The Titanic as Myth".

Basharat Peer - A REPORTER AT LARGE: "Modern Mecca: The Hajj Meets A Boom in Development".

Lauren Collins - LETTER FROM POREC: "A Croatian Resort Prepares For Partyers"
.
Nathan Heller - THE CRITICS: "How To Be Alone".

That does look like a good issue...... Maybe it will help inspire me.

Amazingly, I finished reading the month of New Yorkers on April 29... and now have four of them to record... dunno when this will happen, but it will happen on this thread.

#21 Wow!

Last night, I started reading the review of Hilary Mantel's new book in the issue that arrived on Monday and fell asleep (not because of the review, though!).

Congratulations, Q, I don't know what the deal is with me! Flirting with disaster! "I don't feel like it" is the only excuse I have..... not much of one.....

May thread is up......

MAY