Robert Birnbaum has been reading Naked Sleeper by Sigrid Nunez, House of Meetings by Martin Amis, Zoli by Colum McCann, Joseph Epstein's essay on turning 70, Chris Hedges' Nov 2004 aricle on the Christian Right and the Rise of American Fascism (that no major US periodical would publish), Jon Lee Anderson on Hugo Chavez and also the Taliban, Jim Harrison's essay in the NYTBR ("Feed The Poets"), Joyce Oates on Anne Leibovitz in the NYRB, Sigrid Nunez on Susan Sontag in Salamagundi, Matters of Honor by Louis Begley, Better by Atul Gawande, Surveillance by Jonathan Raban, and the story of the week (Feb 3) at Mr Beller's Neighborhood.
Summer Block is working on a travel essay/book review on Vikram Chandra's work, so she's taking Red Earth and Pouring Rain, Love and Longing in Bombay, and Sacred Games along to India with her. On her desk at home she has Augusten Burroughs' Running with Scissors, David Sedaris' (edited) Children Playing Before a Statue of Hercules, Nabokov's Lectures on Literature, Freud's The Uncanny, and her still-unopened copy of Pynchon's Against the Day.
Ali Salerno has a thing for Harper's. She's also started reading: The Moonstone, by Wilkie Collins. The Collected Stories of Richard Bausch. VQR. Death in the Haymarket, by James Green.
Ross Simonini is on Never Let Me Go by Ishiguro, Six Memos for the New Millenium by Calvino, 18 Stories by Heinrich Boll, and Design with X by Dean Young.
Alexandra Tursi is all over Life is Elsewhere by Milan Kundera, The Black Book by Orhan Pamuk, Eat Pray Love by Elizabeth Gilbert, and The Beautiful Fall by Alicia Drake
Andrew Whitacre is checking out Good Soldier Svejk by Jaroslav Hasek and The Plot Against America by Philip Roth. Then mags...Tin House, Believer, Post Road.