The year was weird and so the year in reading was weird. Lot of all-timers on here. Lot of books I felt conflicted about. Not included: books I almost finished, am still finishing, may never finish. Exciting: some new voices of a generation emerged! Not exciting: I read half of DeLillo’s Underworld for the first time and loved it but for some reason never finished it? What’s that about? I’ll get there. If you’re curious about a book or want a recommendation, ask me!
There’s really nothing like a good magazine. It’s weird, I feel like it’s a bit of a lost art—not magazines themselves, but understanding what makes one good. There are for sure a decent amount of great ones out there, but it’s rare for me to find one that features an organic vision, AKA not the result of a semi-frantic Twitter search to see what people are “talking about.” It’s not especially difficult to give people what they already know they want, but it takes real skill to give people what they didn’t realize they wanted all along. Anyway. I write all this because the new High Snobiety magazine is a product of genuine vision, an enthusiastic look at actually cool shit happening right now. I’m biased—I profiled Matty Matheson for the issue, but seeing how it all fit together gave me hope for the future of print.
It never ceases to blow my mind that Leon and Alison have the same birthday. It feels like some kind of cosmic gift — statistically it’s gotta be extremely rare, right? Okay probably not, but it’s still wild. I am in awe of both of them, their perspectives on the world, and how they choose to express themselves. So similar, but so opposite too. I am very lucky. Happy birthday Leon and Alison!
