Near the end of 2003, after hearing from my friends about all these great stories in the New Yorker and whining that I really should get around to subscribing, a friend took pity on me and gave me a subscription for my birthday. I was amazed at the sheer amount of text in each issue. At first I didn't read articles that did not address subjects I already knew I was interested in. But eventually I realized that even the articles on topics that I had avoided in the past were usually fascinating. And articles about current events, which I sometimes get tired of keeping up with, would often give me a far better understanding of events in a part of the world than 10 New York Times articles had. Soon I was reading every word. I got to be a faster reader than I'd ever been before, and even then I often stayed up reading later than I should have to keep up with the rapid influx of issues. I renewed my subscription in 2004. But by the end of 2005, I had a large backlog of books I wanted to read, and despite the incredible value that the magazine represented to me I begrudged paying $46 for another year, because I had heard that if I let my subscription lapse for a little while, I would be offered a year at cheaper and cheaper rates. Since then I've enjoyed reading the following books, in rough chronological order (no affiliate stuff going on here, I don't get anything if you buy the books through these links):

• Crime and Punishment
• A Hundred Years of Japanese Film
• Paris To The Moon
• Kafka on the Shore
• Emotions Revealed
• The People's Guide to Mexico
• A People's History of the United States
• Spoken Here (travels among threatened languages)
• Haunted Weather (travelogue and meditations on experimental music)
• Kitchen Science

I've also gotten through about 90% of the complete Sherlock Holmes. That's been my bedside reading, since the book weighs about 10 pounds. Recently I've been studying Spanish. I never did receive those cheaper offers from the New Yorker, perhaps because I wasn't a subscriber for as long as the people from whom I heard the reports of them. This past November, someone again took pity and got me a subscription as a gift for my birthday. A few days ago, I finally got the offer from the New Yorker for a year's subscription at the 'Professional Rate' of $29.95. It didn't specify what profession I am part of that entitles me to the rate; cheap bastard, perhaps?