magazines

For the past few years, I've had a subscription to the Atlantic monthly. For the past few months, I've had a subscription to the Economist weekly. Both of these publications I enjoy reading very much. I am always very apprehensive for Mondays when the Economist comes and I get to see what the headlines are and take a quick look at the articles for the week. They mainly are on foreign affairs, but there is always a very interesting technology section and a section devoted to an interesting person who has died. For example, the issue before Christmas profiled a man who had had a lobotomy because he had been having up to 11 seizures per week. After the procedure he only had 2 seizures for the next year, but he was also incapable of forming new memories. He had had the operation when he was 16 years old, my age, so he only remembered things that happened before he was 16. He died last year at the age of 91. That's 75 years of only remembering years 1 through 16. In the Atlantic, they have a very eclectic mix of topics. This makes receiving the next issue especially fun because I never know what I am going to get. For example, last issue, they had a transcription of an interview between one of the Atlantic correspondents and the man who is in charge of holding all of the US's debt in China. They also have articles on interesting parts of the world and unique foods. I spend a lot of time reading these, but at least it gives me a reason to look forward to Mondays.

Sinclair Louis

I recently finished a book by Sinclair Lewis, a Minnesotan author from Sauk Center, called Babbit. It is about a man in the early 1900s who is very discontent with his life and the social demands of his very conformist "friends." It was a pretty good book, but it lacked a solid plot. I read it because my dad recommended it. I am now onto a book called Main Street, also by Sinclair Lewis. I started it the same day that I finished Babbit. I am, however, finding that what I wrote for my blog a few weeks ago, called Picking a Good Book, is once again coming true. While I do like Main Street, I am finding that the writing is so similar that it is almost as if I am reading a sequel to Babbit, that has slightly different characters. For example, Main Street is also about demands of society in which the main character feels out of place. The thoughts of the main character are similar to those of Babbit, and it seems the only difference between the two protagonists is gender. I found out by reading The Winter of Our Discontent, that huge changes in writing style and content can be hard on a reader; now I'm also finding that too little change can also be tolling.