good reading

My Mom had asked me what I wanted for my 30th birthday (which is on Dec 18!!) and I couldn’t think of anything. Really, I have enough shit and the last thing I really wanted – Ved Mehta’s memoir of working with famous New Yorker editor William Shawn – she bought for me a few months ago. But last night (after already receiving a big box in the mail that I presume is my birthday gift) I wrote to her that if she hadn’t already bought me a Christmas gift, what I really want is a subscription to the New Yorker.

I’ve kinda wanted this since I’ve been in Australia. Mom ocassionally sends me photocopied articles or the occasional full issue when she is done reading her copy. One reason I’ve resisted a subscription is because the bloody thing comes out weekly. I have a whole box of various magazines and newsletters that I don’t get through because I read novels instead, so the last thing I figure I need is a full-on magazine to come every week.

But the past few weeks I’ve been reading some of my magazines and realising nothing I read stays with me. The Big Issue, The Monthly, Australian Author, they’re alright, but not offering me articles that I think about for days or can use for interesting conversational fodder (except for one in the Monthly about Bill Gates funding malaria vaccination research). So, I think I should stop reading so many magazines and just focus on the one that’s always been the best for me: The New Yorker.

I want to support Australian magazines rather than importing from America, but so far I haven’t found anything here with the intellectual rigour of the New Yorker. I miss it and I want it and it actually only comes out to $2.30 per issue for an overseas subsription!!!! I may be getting it two months late, though….

If Mom’s already bought my Christmas gifts, I’ll just have to shell out the $120 (American) myself!