A few years ago I was visiting my friend Roman. He asked me if I read The Believer. I told him I hadn’t heard of it. He silently reproved me, knowing that it would be right up my alley and being quite displeased that I wasn’t keeping up with the hip. I was very impressed with what I saw.
The Believer is put out through McSweeney’s. It seems to have filled in for the non-fiction niche that McSweeney’s slowly removed from its pages.
And since then, I have become a devoted follower. At some point (probably around issue ten or eleven) I decided that I was going to read every word in every issue. And so, (this was pre-kids) when I went to an ALA conference with Sarah, I spent a lot of the down time reading all of the back issues’ articles that I hadn’t read.
Since then, I have read every issue cover to cover. The thing that I love about the magazine (in addition to all of the stuff that I would normally like about it) is that every article is so well written that even if I don’t care about the subject, I know I’ll be interested for the duration of the piece. Whether or not I will go on to read anything else about the person or topic is neither here nor there, but when I’m in the moment I’m really hooked. (more…)
I Just Read About That... 