Things-I-Love-Thursday: The New Yorker

I have to say, I've found it very hard to think of the things I love today as I'm feeling very upset, helpless, and more than a bit angry. Still, I made a promise that I would try to find something each Thursday, no matter how small, so here goes. 

I love my subscription to The New Yorker that arrives in my mail box with sometimes alarming regularity - often before I've finished reading the previous issue!

I subscribed not long after I got pregnant with Max at a time when I was feeling very depressed and had a lot of time on my hands. I was so depressed that I did not even have the energy to read a novel, which is pretty much the main thing I like to do with my spare time, so that started to become rather problematic! When I could get no pleasure from going to Readings to browse around was when everyone realised I was not doing so well!

So, when I could not read novels, I was looking for things to read that were a little more bite sized, but that I wouldn't be embarrassed to read in cafes. General magazines aren't really my thing. I hate celebrity gossip and don't have a lot of tolerance for the usual 'women's interest' titles. My previous magazine staple, Frankie, was also proving disappointing. I think, perhaps, I outgrew its demographic over the last year as what I used to love about it started to really irk me.

The New Yorker was a wonderful cure for all of these things. It strikes the exact right balance between scholarly and general interest, the literary and the political, and fiction and non-fiction pieces. It also has  poems as well as very witty cartoons. Sometimes they are so clever and witty that I don't even get them, but I continue to laugh anyway! Is there anything more you could ask for in a publication? I think not!

The only possible downside to subscribing to The New Yorker is that it is very disappointing when you put it down and are forced to realise that you are in Heidelberg Heights instead of downtown Manhattan, and that you have no real chance of attending the opening of Death of a Salesman playing on West 47th Street.

Some of the many things I love about the The New Yorker are:

The front covers
Every week you get a thrilling surprise when you first lay your eyes on the front of the issue and rush to figure out what this issue's cover image is responding to. This one, from the issue just after Steve Jobs' death, is one of my favourites!

Goings on About Town
I especially love the section 'Goings on About Town', precisely because it lets me, for a few pages, fantasise that I am in the big apple with nothing else to do except attend wonderful theatre openings and serious concerts at Carnegie Hall.

The cartoon caption contest
None of the captions I think of could possibly rival some the clever ones that win, but a girl can dream, can't she?

In short, The New Yorker is wonderful in so many ways, and it is most certainly a thing I love, especially because subscription prices are also very good value, with weekly delivery of your own piece of NewYork City for only $120 a year!