"What to Read Now" -- Newsweek

I know I'm really late to this game, especially since the huge books section was printed in the July 13 issue of Newsweek, but I gotta admit, the whole section is kinda killing me. Not only did it add an insane number of books to my TBR list, but it added all sorts of pressure to read them NOW, and, well, with this ongoing job search and generally being tired and busy and climbing all the time, I'm already reading significantly less than I otherwise would (even when I was working full time last summer!). I'm really hoping that something in the job front pans out soon so my reading can pick up its pace a little.

Yet, I'm still really thankful that Newsweek cast aside some of the pressure to devote pages and pages and pages to Michael Jackson's memory (that's another can of worms there) and published pages and pages and pages of books that I want to read instead. Plus, most of them were books that should have been on my TBR list (which, at the moment, consists of the entirety of my unread 1,001 Books list plus an almost-page-long Word document with "Miscellaneous Books I want to Read" plus whatever manages to catch my eye in the bookstore plus my Amazon wish list) -- like McNamara's In Retrospect and Kissinger's Diplomacy. I'll never ever get through the list, but that's totally okay. It's better to have a too-long TBR list than to not know what to read next! Plus, personally, I think Newsweek put together a list containing a really good mix of literary fiction, contemporary non-fiction, and historical/scientific/psychological popular non-fiction. There's something there for every kind of reader, and since I tend to be a hands-in-multiple-cookie-jars kind of reader, it was really perfect for me!

Fifty Books for Our Times
What to Read Now