Gadgets and scents in The New Yorker

I read two charming pieces in The New Yorker this morning. "Tech Stuff: What will the newest gadgets replace in your life?" is a witty review of a slew of products: new-fangled computers, e-book platforms, crazy phones, etc. The writer, Patricia Marx, is apparently just as much a Luddite as I am, although she is much funnier. "Only techno-tards make actual phone calls... Phones now have names like Heat, Chocolate, Rumor, BlackJack, Shine, Tilt, Pearl, and Wing, all of which sound like prophylactics, for what reason I not know."

And, "No matter that I can barely make it through the table of contents of a magazine these days; I am still confident that I will finish every volume of Trollope and run out of reading material by the time the elevator reaches the lobby. That's why I love my Amazon Kindle..."

John Lanchester wrote a wonderful review of a group of books on wine and perfume. In "Scents & Sensibility: What the nose knows" he discusses one book which particularly intrigued me: Perfumes: The Guide, which I've already placed in my Amazon cart. It talks about the science of scent and reviews all these different perfumes. But using language to describe scent become this surprising literary feat, full of apt and amusing descriptions and observations. Of Tresor they write: "From a distance, it's the trashiest, most good-humored pink mohair sweater and bleached hair thing imaginable." Lanchester concludes the book is "quite simply, ravishingly entertaining."