· New Distraction

The confluence of my recently getting an iPhone and my new semi-lengthy train commute to school has conspired to create a new distraction for me. I had never owned an iPod or other portable music player (not even a CD player... the last such technology I had was a cassette Walkman that I brought with me on a trip to Europe, long long ago!), and I have spent the last month belatedly catching up to the widespread reality of being able to hear music on the go, which has been rather amazing, I must admit!

But, the best thing has been some of the various podcasts I have begun to subscribe to... many of them are just versions of radio shows I already listened to, either online or on an actual radio station, like This American Life and All Things Considered... But there are a few new ones I am beginning to explore as well. My favorite recently is the New Yorker's fiction podcast, wherein one of the magazine's impressive stable of writers chooses a story by a different author from the archives, reads it, and discusses it with Deborah Treisman, the magazine's fiction editor. It serves a bit like a succinct and delightful book club; the two always have good points to make on matters of style, language usage, etc. I was esp. impressed with this month's pick by Tobias Wolff: Stephanie Vaughn’s short story “Dog Heaven.”

It's sort of funny, though... I almost never read any fiction in the actual magazine!