Summer Reading: Artworld Voyeurism.

A roundup of beach reads, all summer long.

“Where do you get all your material?”

I started to say that I work with a number estates, a few working artists, and am in constant contact with collectors wishing to sell things—

“No, no, no—I mean material for your newsletter. You don’t really read all those books?”

I laughed and reassured him, “Of course not! Nobody actually reads books!”

But, dear reader, I know I can share with you the truth: sadly, I read. In fact, I read nearly everything I cite, as well as several things a month that I will never cop to.

It didn’t used to be so. In fact, I’ve always had an arm’s length relationship with literacy, exercising the muscle as seldom as possible, in hopes of one day selling the organ as tender brain veal. (No takers.) Writing, however, has for a long time come easily. Well, the writing is hard, but the word count is easy: starting just after college (alas, I allowed school to stand in the way of my education), I filled 600 pages a year. Is that a gift or a social sickness? Yes.

And then one day in the late 2010s, I looked down and noticed that my page count had dropped off radically. What changed? It wasn’t exhaustion and I had no new hobbies. I was stressed about work and the state of the world, but looking back on my child-less years in the first Trump administration, I can’t believe how easy I had it. No, the difference was simpler, and I share this with you because I know you can profit from this one weird trick, as I have: I stopped reading and writing when I started listening to podcasts.

It was like night and day: when Rachel Maddow, Marc Maron, and Ira Glass speak, I listen. I really like podcasts, for the same reason you do—but when there is someone else’s voice rambling incoherently about Glengarry Glenn Ross, you know what there isn’t? My voice rambling incoherently about Glengarry Glenn Ross. It turns out I spend a lot of time rehearsing silently (and sometimes aloud) to myself; absent that bumbling little monologue, I find that I don’t have much to say. Worse, I never feel fully awake.

Maron’s finally ending his long-running podcast, and Maddow does MSNBC like Bill Murray does weddings, so 2025 is a year to make a commitment. If you’re feeling media fatigue, try this:

Replace every minute of doomscrolling with a digital book from the library. (I use NYPL’s interface with the Libby App). Every time you reach for your phone and your thumb moves to The New York Times, X, or Insta (if you’ve read this far, I take it for granted that you’ve deleted your Facebook account already), instead, open your book app. Seriously. And next time you’re puttering around the house and wondering whether Marc Maron likes the second Specials record (DOES HE???), instead, put on an audio book.

“Spies, you ‘read’ audiobooks? Isn’t that for truck-drivers and children?” Yeah, and it rules. If having people tell you stuff is for children then you should have no problem turning off your Michael Hobbes—but when you try this, you will notice, as I did, two important things: first, that it is not easy to turn off Michael Hobbes, delightful though he is; and second, that the long-form of a book-length monograph is therapeutic to the brain and spirit however you consume it. Keep on truckin’.