I’ll admit it I like reading fiction. Basically, anything that’s a page turner. If it doesn’t grab my attention in the first few seconds I’m not reading it. The last book I read was ‘Middlesex‘ – I know, I know Oprah’s book club … how lame. But it was quite an enjoyable book. I mean who doesn’t like reading about an hermaphrodite growing up in Michigan in the 1970’s … sure we all do!

But now I’ll admit that my new “guilty fiction pleasure” is the ‘fiction’ section in the New Yorker magazine – and hubby & I have quite a lot of New Yorker magazines stacked up on our coffee table. I just started reading the ‘fiction’ section & it’s been fun weeding through the magazines to find good stories to read. If the story doesn’t draw me in with the first paragraph then into the recycling bin that magazine goes … I suppose this is how publishers do it when trying to weed through all the crap novels that get sent to them (well, at least the nice publishers that actually try to read the novels).

You might be wondering why all of a sudden I started reading the New Yorker rather than say … an actual book. The answer is a bit embarrassing. You see, I’m a nerd. I play The Sims 2 – my main enjoyment is building houses (I’m quite good at it, and have somewhat of a following on the sims website). Anyway, my game is chalked full of custom content (furniture items and objects that other sim nerds like me have made) and all this custom content makes my game load very very very s.l.o.w.l.y. Usually my game takes about 10 to 15 minutes to load. For me I can’t stand just sitting there … thus the New Yorker ‘fiction’ section to the rescue! I read while my game loads, between houses and saving times. I also read the New Yorker while things are buffering of the internet. This basically keeps my sanity in check and makes it so I don’t start screaming obscenities at my computer.

So, here I sit … New Yorker magazine folded to the ‘fiction’ section just waiting for something to load or buffer. How else would I get any reading done? Ah, to live in a computerized age. I think the juxtaposition is quite charming.