media meme

i was tagged by have fun do good to take part in the media consumption meme. i'm not much of a media junkie, but i'll give it a whirl.

books: i love reading. but i don't love listing favorites. i enjoy the escapism of fiction, the beauty and braininess of poetry and the lifestyle inspiration i find in non fiction. recently i joined librarything but as you can see, i'm moving along slowly. i don't have much time to read between working full time and being a mom. and i spend entirely too much time writing in this blog. of course i read a ton to tashi, but that is a whole other catagory.

books i've read in the last year include Beyond the Sky and the Earth by Jamie Zeppa, Sleeping in Caves by Marilyn Stablein, Holy Cow by Sarah MacDonald, The Cypriot by Andreas Koumi, The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri, Brick Lane by Monica Ali, some of The Iliad by Homer, and currently, Huerfano by Roberta Price.

i move from poetry book to poetry book reading poems at random and not necessarily from first to last. i love alchemical, lyrical, imagistic poets and a just a few of my favorite female poets include HD, Diane di Prima and Laynie Brown.


magazines: i used to subscribe Hip Mama until it stopped publishing. i used to subscribe to Mothering but since tashi is no longer a baby or toddler it feels less relevant. they have a great website/discussion board however. i currently subscribe to Cookie which is a fashionable magazine for parents. i find some of the products they promote absurdly overpriced and i have to laugh at the moms hanging around at home in dresses that cost over a grand. but it's a treat in the way any glossy fashion magazine can be, and even more so since it caters to parents. i recently ordered a free copy of Blueprint and picked up a whole stack of Martha Stewart Living from a freecycler.

movies: i watch at least a movie a week if not two or three. i feel like movies are my guilty pleasure. we have no babysitter so I rent everything. we can rent movies for free from the university, but in particular i love charlottesville's indie video shop, sneak reviews. i'm just not that interested in netflix.

i have a very short term memory with movies. when someone asks me my favorite movie i almost always draw a blank. for a while i was on a jim jarmusch binge and then i was on a robert altman binge. every once in a while i try another bollywood film hoping it will be good and not ridiculously sappy and formulaic. one of my favorite movies that I saw this past year was, Breakfast on Pluto. i also loved water, of the earth and fire trilogy. i like all sorts of movies: documentary, period piece, experimental, foreign. and imdb is a great resource though i dislike their new layout.

music: i like all sorts of music from indian classical to emo from avant jazz to girlie singer songwriter from folk to opera. i was even a deadhead once. recent cd's include belle & sebastion's the life pursuit, akron/family, a couple of mixes by cheb i sabbah, ben harper's fight for your life, and neko case live from austin, tx.

radio: aside from npr where ever i am, in berkley it was kpfa and kalx, in ann arbor it was wcbn, in charlottesville it's wtju. at work i listen to pandora regularly and love all the new music it's introduced me to.

tv: mostly i hate tv. but sometimes, especially lately, i find myself channel surfing. we didn't even own a tv until my mom insisted on buying us one a few years ago. it's mostly a vehicle for dvd's. last week i watched an entire episode of lost for the first time. now i want to see this week's. i like to catch the medium once in a while. i used to like x files but that's all gone. when i'm feeling nocturnal i watch david letterman or saturday night live. if i had cable i'd probably watch the daily show and i'm curious about ugly betty.

web: i use firefox.

communication: i used to use eudora but now that i have a new laptop i'm not sure what i'll use. i check webmail through my earthlink and university of virginia accounts. at work i use mulberry but don't like it much. i used to have aim but now i guess i'll use ichat for instant messaging. at work i use trillian and sometimes skype.

i'm too tird to tag anyone and i bet anyone is too tired to be tagged.