now, tastes more like real life

Now that I've finished Jude, I'm reading two new books. I started both last night and I'm excited. The first, literary one is Beware of God, a series of short stories by Shalom Auslander. I've only read one story so far, but it's tightly written and funny, so I already recommend it. Here's a brief piece he wrote about the "Information Age" (link from Bookslut).

I tend to think along those lines sometimes. An admitted blog-reader and obsessive, I sometimes have to remind myself that my life will not end if I don't read that link I saved and e-mailed myself from Slate or Vanity Fair. That in fact, my life could possibly be better - more productive, not just in the "on top of my shit" sense but in the creative sense - because really why spend so much time reading what everyone else has to say? It's like when I read that Atlantic article and only finished half of it, wrote a (I think) brilliant paragraph about the Office and how awesome it was, and then finished the damn article and realized someone else had gotten there first. So maybe if I didn't read so much I'd get there first. (Not that I'd be published in the Atlantic or anything, but that would be nice.)

But so often I discover new interesting things from reading stuff on the Internet that I don't give it up. Like, for example, Shalom Auslander himself, who is ironically writing for an Internet publication (although he seems to be more worried about information-as-news rather than information-as-commentary-criticism-celebrity pictures which seems to be missing part of the point). But anyway, my point is, it's an interesting piece, and it's pertinent to me right now because I'm reading his book. So there.