Weekend Reading List

Flip, flip, flip.

I've got a stack of new magazines to the left, and a stack of really old magazines unpacked from a box to my right. I must say the they don't make magazines like they used to anymore. The June 1984 Vanity Fair, on top of the heap, is anything but trashy, with features on (an imaginative mix) Anthony Powell, Boy George (by Jan Morris), Paul Theroux, Stephen Hawking, Deborah Turbeville (remember her?) and Norman Mailer. Plus it's only 112 pages. In comparison, the Monocle looks interesting, and is certainly well-designed, but every issues looks somewhat the same (formulaic) and the content is fairly similar, in substance and tone, so I actually dread having to read it. Oh dear, do I have to (I think I'll have to give these away soon and learn never, never to buy another Monocle)?

I think what I'm going to do is just lie back and listen to the Jeremy Irons (the lipless wonder, above, in a photo by Lord Snowdon) audio book of Brideshead Revisited. B, from the office had to rip this for me from the 10 CDs set I borrowed from the library and painstakingly uploaded for me to my ipod. It's pure bliss, and very much a treat that will see me through the weekend.