In the New Yorker...

[Jeff Wrangler]

I think I am about to have trouble with my subscription. Again.  

I have not yet received the Feb. 13 issue, and the last issue date on my mailing label is the Feb. 6 issue. I have received nothing by either snail mail or e-mail about renewing the subscription--or whether it has automatically renewed. I usually have the next week's issue by Thursday of the preceding week.

You may recall that when I had to update my credit card information back in the fall of 2015 (because my subscription would expire in January 2016), instead of updating my information, the magazine cancelled my subscription! (Or allowed it to end. Whatever.)

I would miss the magazine, but if the same thing happens again this year, today I'm feeling just cranky enough not to want to deal with it and instead to tell The New Yorker to shove it.  

I would miss the magazine--not sure what I would read at lunch time--but I'm sure I'd get over it. I suppose I could go back to reading a newspaper.

Right now I'm reading TNY article about the military unit in the battle to retake Mosul from ISIS.

[serious crayons]

Just FYI, the latest issue is Feb. 13-20, a double issue. It's the one with the fizzled Statue of Liberty torch on the cover.

It's called The Anniversary Issue, though it doesn't have any version of the monocled top-hatted guy, except on the TOC page (or is it always there?).

Nobody from my list of must-read writers, but a few writers I enjoy, and the contents look decent but there's nothing that would make me tear into it immediately.

[Front-Ranger]

A pleasant respite last evening. I went to a fun winetasting downtown and then when I got home, I lay in my comfortable bed, finishing up a small glass of mead, watching my kitty groom her lower abdomen and reading about Anthony Bourdain in the New Yorker. What a happy, perfect time.

[Jeff Wrangler]

Just FYI, the latest issue is Feb. 13-20, a double issue. It's the one with the fizzled Statue of Liberty torch on the cover.

Yeah, I noticed that from where you posted a picture of the cover.

[Jeff Wrangler]

Hmm. Yeah, I gave up and phoned about my subscription.

The nice young woman at Conde Nast Publications told me I had been mailed a renewal notice, but I never got it. She took my renewal information, but I won't get an issue until the one that will be cover dated March 6.

[serious crayons]

IF you have a subscription, you can access the entire New Yorker archives on their website (yes, going back to the 20s or whenever, I think, though I've never done it). So if you're at all curious about the two missing editions, you can read them there.

[Front-Ranger]

There was a review of frequent New Yorker fiction writer George Saunders' new book, his first full-length novel, in this week's Time Magazine. It's called Lincoln in the Bardo. I don't think the title makes the book sound very appealing, but the review warmed me up to it. Even more interesting was Saunders' comments on the way he writes, his inspiration for the book, and his use of "alternative realities" for want of a better phrase.

[serious crayons]

There was a review of frequent New Yorker fiction writer George Saunders' new book, his first full-length novel, in this week's Time Magazine. It's called Lincoln in the Bardo. I don't think the title makes the book sound very appealing, but the review warmed me up to it. Even more interesting was Saunders' comments on the way he writes, his inspiration for the book, and his use of "alternative realities" for want of a better phrase.

I've been looking forward to this book, too, but also didn't like the title. I thought Bardo must be some physical place in Washington D.C. where they keep bodes for burial or something like that (the grief-stricken Lincoln is visiting his recently deceased son). Instead, it turns out that "bardo" is like a Buddhist version of limbo or Purgatory. The NYT review, by Coleson Whitehead -- author of the excellent "Underground Railroad" and no slouch at alternative realities himself -- made it sound really interesting.

[Jeff Wrangler]

Abraham Lincoln?

[serious crayons]

Abraham Lincoln?

Yes. When people refer casually to "Lincoln" -- especially as the subject of a book reviewed in Time and the NYT -- they don't usually mean Andrew Lincoln, star of AMC's The Walking Dead.