Issue 399 and counting...

March 22, 2009 at 10:03 pm (Reviews) (magazines to read on airplanes, Nicholas Carr, Patricia Brieschke, The Sun, wendell berry)

I have a big post I’ve been working on about independent media stuff, kind of a summary of the talks that I’m giving around the country over the next couple of weeks. That will be up in a few days, but in the meantime, I wanted to give a big huge shout out to The Sun–one of my long-time favs. Yep, that’s not a typo, this is issue No. 399 of this monthly, advertisment-free publication.

I read this issue on the way up to Portland last week, and honestly, this is one of the best issues I’ve read in a long time. Each issue features one long, in depth interview, and this time it is with Nicholas Carr, author of “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” The interview is all about how we interact with each other, how the internet is changing those interactions and how we think about things and process information. It also talks about how Carr feels that computers have harmed our relationship with nature, and later in the interview, a really interesting discussion of how people behave on the internet. Like, how we claim to want privacy, but don’t act in a private way on the internet, giving out personal information about ourselves all the time, not just through obvious channels like blogs and Facebook, but through our shopping habits and the way that we give out information to corporations (like adding a “wish list” on Amazon, for example).  Like all Sun interviews, this one is very thoughtful.

The rest of the issue has a lot about food, fiction and non fiction. I always enjoy the “Readers Write” section, which are essays from readers around a different topic (this time, “the dinner table”), and though there were several other pieces I liked, I particularly loved two: a reprint of a Wendell Berry essay from the ’80s about why he isn’t buying a computer, and a piece entitled “All of Me” by Patricia Brieschke. Brieschke writes about body image as a woman in her 60s, including reflections from her past about her relationship to food and her body. Like most women, body image has been an important topic to me, and I found Brieschke’s reflections to be refreshingly frank and honest.

I look forward to The Sun every month, and you know I have to say it: Although a lot of this content is available online, please subscribe to The Sun and other magazines, it’s the best way to help them remain strong and stable.

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