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How do other people deal with the torrent of information that pours down on us all? Do they have some secret? Perhaps. We are asking various people who seem well-informed to describe their media diets. This is drawn from an email exchange, edited for clarity and length, with Jennifer Egan, who recently won a Pulitzer Prize for her novel A Visit From the Goon Squad.
If I'm not taking the kids to school, I try to at least look through The New York Times right after my husband leaves with them. We still get the physical paper; I'm not a big fan of screen reading. My first reading is often a scan, but I scan with Post-its in hand, and often end up marking several things: articles that might interest our kids; articles that catch my attention for reasons I'm not clear on (most important from the fiction writing standpoint); others that appeal to me journalistically; cultural events we might want to check out.
If I do take the kids to school, I'll read to my younger son after we drop off the elder. For the past month or so, we've been reading the Arabian Nights, which is quite bloody and rash—we both love it. That is often the first thing I'll read in the morning on those days. Walking home from school takes 15-20 minutes, and I always listen to my iPod while walking, in part to distract me from the grocery bags I'm often lugging by that time. My morning music choices tend to be, let's say, energizing rather than sophisticated: this morning it was a couple of Lady Gaga hits from last summer: "Telephone" and "Let's Dance." If a song is putting me in the right mood, I'll often just repeat it the whole way home.