Good reading.

This one's short and sweet. Just an emphatic recommendation.

The quarterly Oxford American, self-professed "Southern magazine of good writing" (how true it is though!), doesn't get as much word-of-mouth or circulation as it should. But the people who subscribe to it obsess over it, including yours truly. This magazine publishes the best southern fiction AND non-fiction writers out there--the work of big-wigs you'll recognize from other places like The New Yorker alongside pieces by thoughtful grad students, artists, and also...just ordinary folk. Its aura is witty, but you can settle into an issue like an old couch.

A few years ago the magazine, which is published in Arkansas, embraced a full-on thematic model. Each issue is a collection. The food issue, the music issue (where I originally discovered Dale Hawkins), the fiction issue, etc. Right now the Southern Food issue is on stands, actually, and I recommend you go eat it up.

Here's the website, too: http://www.oxfordamerican.org/articles/issues/latest_issue/

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Currently: listening to Brett Dennen, "Darlin' Do Not Fear"/smelling like eucalyptus/about to start Philip Roth's American Pastoral.