New Yorker magazine alert thread

i was all but bawling in union square when i finished it

what's it about?

i have the summer fiction issue waiting @ home for me but am considering saving it for my vacation next month

his infant daughter getting sick with really rare cancer

i know what it sounds like! but

oh jeez

i have the summer fiction issue waiting @ home for me but am considering saving it for my vacation next month

― ideas are death (Lamp), Thursday, June 9, 2011 4:43 PM (49 seconds ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

tbh there are only three stories in it, and i didnt like the last one i dont think, maybe i need to read it again, and the saunders and eugenides are good but not amazing. dont expect to be squirreling away a treat, is all.

even one really good story would be exceed my expectations! i just dont have much to read atm

the little one-page starting out pieces are all really nice; one'll make me dig out the last fiction thing, which had salvatore scibona's story in, which i don't think i read on account of the shitty & i guess toxic joshua ferris piece in the same issue (SS also did this what i'm reading thing on the blog that i found somehow v endearing). there's also a kind of eloquent, cathartic, gentle fuck-you piece by tea obrecht. i think maybe i just like oral histories more than i do fiction, now. the pieces also have panels of some of the only clear white space i've ever seen in the magazine.

the scibona was my fave, definitely

i don't think i am going to struggle through something set in the '50s right now, but if my affection & admiration translated into perseverence w/reading i would pick up his book right away. apparently it is p good.

scibona saying "I didn't know what I was doing or what I believed in, except the United States of America and the Cleveland Browns."

made me think of brownie and ilnfl <3

O_O

otm

finished Devil and Sherlock Holmes, then tore through Lost City of Z. up next:
http://i.imgur.com/SFp5O.jpg

anything else on the NYer book club list?

I've been meaning to read The Devil and Sherlock Holmes for some time, thanks for the reminder. Interesting to see that three of the stories from that have been optioned for films. Honest question, how does that work for these kind of investigative reports? Does Grann get a decent payday from the studios? Or does it generally funnel back to the subjects?

Here's an article that goes into it
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m3065/is_n14_v25/ai_18729174/

Awesome, thanks!

reminds me -- do we have an active ILX new books you are reading thread?

Spring will be a little late this year: what are you reading, Spring 2011?

yeah, i know that one. i meant more "NEW" (to the world, not u) books you're reading. like the What Albums Are Worth Listening To So Far in 2011 thread but for books

There's this

Rolling Contemporary Literary Fiction

i keep reading interviews with george saunders and meaning to read him, so pleased by how articulate & effusive he seems, and i pretty much started doing so with the story in the fiction issue; i only read a couple of pages and just can not bring myself to finish it. does it transcend its clunky quirks? i know g.s. & i have a future but i do not think this is it.

there are bigger fans of GS on this board than me, though i like him a lot, but if you dont like that story im not sure youd like any saunders. that kind of... naturalistic dialogue and narration is his thing

yeah i thought that one was actually a little understated for him

i am leaving in a sec so this maybe isn't the best time to launch into a big thing but, i think i have problems with some things like that, like the dfw story that i forget the name of that's written in a v sorta reduced idiolect of this gruff laconic guy. like i love the old man and the sea & all but there's this danger of being too aware of the writer, and it getting anthropological, sometimes, i think -- or maybe there isn't, but i give up before it earns its keep. probably if you're okay with accepting the conceit of fiction you should be okay with a guy putting on a voice, but it rubbed against me the wrong way somehow. that i also am impatient with classics & stuff written in just anything that isn't a modern dialect ... maybe it is me.

with the saunders i think it seemed kinda hokey to me, the bleeping and all, the narrator himself fluttering about btw registers on top of it all. but then maybe my damning criticism of the story based on p1 & 2 is a little sharp.

he wrote that palin piece a while ago, the embrace of her dialect in which was its triumph, so i amn't giving up yet.

& max that hamon piece slays, yes.

george saunders hasn't been very good for the last couple years i'm sorry to say but his first two collections are all-time

yeah, I liked Saunders first two books, but that recent story didn't do a lot for me. Maybe it reminded me a little too much of that great story about the male stripper with the zombie mom.

the article on contractors in iraq is really good & depressing too

― ☂ (max), Monday, 6 June 2011 01:21 (2 weeks ago) Permalink

just read this and I think it was one of the best things I've read in a few months. the burlusconi one was awesome too.

also read the Acai story and the mental health story in the May 30th issue- totally recommend both.

finally finished this ish; the bunga bunga and contractor pieces are both equally o_0

Mental health was brutal and sad. ;_;

did you read the recent article by the man who lost his 10-month-old daughter? jesus.

rebecca mead (who i think is regularly fantastic) has an article abt alice walton's new museum thats really good but then its on a topic that fascinates me so

the article about third party contractors left me furious

did you read the recent article by the man who lost his 10-month-old daughter? jesus.

oh god, i read the mental health one on my ipad on the train and there's a "bonus feature" where you can read the last six photographed pages of her journal before she died and it is just the saddest thing ever and i was kinda choking up on the train and feeling the deepest kind of despair and then it was my stop

the article about third party contractors left me furious

the contrast between the story and the army's boilerplate platitudes - any illegal offence committed on an army base is an illegal act and will be investigated as such, etc - and the ringing telephones was pretty damning.

found myself patting down some acai surveying its sugar content a couple of days after reading the article. maybe this will be the next wave.

is that new george saunders story sufficiently exciting that i should borrow a copy of the new yorker to read it, or should i just wait for the collection, yes this is an appropriate thread to ask this question in

― thomp, Thursday, 23 June 2011 11:54 (4 hours ago) Bookmark

i mean, is it 'yeah it's george saunders it's pretty good' or is it 'george saunders at the top of his game' or is it 'my god, this is the best thing george saunders has ever written'

obv if you don't like george saunders none of these answers will be revelant

relevant too

the first one, i think.

working my way through the insider trading piece, p good, or maybe its just im interested in the topic

denby cgi thing bugged me cuz he does that thing where he basically says people other than kids might not like these kids movies too bad these kids movies aren't better for people who aren't kids. just a running complaint of mine. but in general yeah i guess cgi is outtahand or whatever.

I haven't received the new issue, so I'm still struggling to dent the fiction issue, which I've found rather non-descript, even Lahiri's why-I-write thing.

yeah the cgi thing was very unfocused

denby is srsly no cool

yeah fuck that dude

i mean for real bro

http://grab.by/cC5T

i should probably always skip his stuff just cuz.

he's good at bugging me. would rather read andy rooney essays on film.

All I ever remember about Denby reviews are the times when he spoils something (i.e., Schindler's List).