What I Read: Kevin Smokler

I'm a big fan of the What I Read series at The Atlantic Wire (this weeks guest is Moby). Since I don't know if I'll ever be famous enough to be asked to write my own, I decided to up and do it anyway.

What I Read:

I've always had a weird relationship with current events and topicality. In theory I know that being well informed about what the world is up to is both good conversation lubricant and smart planning in the case of a military coup. In practice, keeping up with the news gives me a headache. We toss information over our shoulder so quickly that the constant falling-in-love-with-then-breaking-up-with stories leaves me craving permanence, substance, stillness instead of hurry. Our age seems to view being well informed as both competitve sport and the steroids you need to compete in it. If you've ever constantly hit refresh at say the Huffington Post just to feed your outrage and later puke that outrage over your dinner table companions, you know what I mean. 

So I'm okay with looking confused when a neighbor clicks their tongue at me, says "Debt Ceiling" and expects a follow-up. I probably don't have one. Or at least not one that adds anything to their lives.

Maybe it seems wrong then that I spend much of my day on Twitter (I've got 65,000 followers who now expect me to show up and share something) which is a steady flicker of here-then-gone messages. I like the format but rarely use it for news or comments on current events. Instead my daily tweeted conversation is a gumbo of factoids, quips and journalism on issues on bigger picture issues (I'm weak in the presence of famous-artist profiles and anything that contains "The Future Of" in the headline). I find most of them on a quick sweep on my iPad through Flipboard, Zite, Byliner (where I used to work), Reddit and my Google Reader. I've got them all set to feed me stories on music, books, entertainment, business and food, my off-the-shelf areas of interest.

I've still got a thing for print magazines as they are safer to take in the bathtub (where I do much of my weekend reading) and lighter in the knapsack. My wife and I share a subscription to the New Yorker and I also get Bomb, The Atlantic and Lapham's Quarterly. Usually while reading, I'll dog ear corners of stories and oddities I intend to tweet later. Without fail, I turn first to the table of contents and make quick decisions about what I'll read and won't. I know this approach seems to throw water over serendipity. I also know that people who believe ardently in serendipity do not suffer paralysis from not knowing what to do next. Being someone who enjoyed feeling lost about as much as I enjoy feeling infirmed, I like to set up my reading slot machines in favor of the house.

I am the house. I place bets on sure things. 

For my kind of non-topical timeless reading, Instapaper, Longreads and Longform have been godsends. As have Arts Journal, FARK, and AL Daily. I know aggregation is supposed to be some sort of enemy of quality journalism but I wouldn't know most quality journalism existed without it. 

My ritual is to use a half-dozen aggregation tools to assemble a quick list of topics that interest me (books, movies, music, art, American History, product design, the 1980s), sort what they feed me into "do I tweet this?" or "would I like to read this?" or both. The reading stuff goes to Instapaper where I then either print it to read at night or read directly from my iPad. If I'm no longer interested in an article when that time comes or can't remember why I saved it, I hit delete. 

I'm working on a book now all about books so a fair about of my book reading happens during office hours, typically in the afternoon. A friend of mine mentioned once that for pleasure, he likes to read one novel, one nonfiction book and one graphic novel at once. I'm trying this strategy, usually before bed, and liking it. 

I've accepted that, at base, I'm a common whore for information, factoids, learning things. And I'm terribly prone to oversharing. I know we are going to miss almost everything. But I love that the era we live in makes the search so much fun, so unceasingly rewarding, and to the benefit of getting smarter but accepting how little we know at the same time. 

• Category: Reading and Books