Gee whiz! (what I'm reading in the jungle)

It's been just about a week since I returned to Ranong, the south Thailand jungle town where, a little over a year ago, I wrote my first book. Since Vagabonding came together quite well here, I've decided to work on book #2 (or at least the introductory chapters) in this frumpy provincial capital just across the Pakchan River from Myanmar. Part of the appeal of Ranong is that it's isolated enough that not much happens here to distract me. There are exceptions, as I have learned, but for the most part I have plenty of time to do my work.

The main distraction in my apartment, I have found, has been the Internet. At the risk of sounding like one of those gee-whiz articles you might have read in the Internet Dark Ages (say, 1997), I am continually amazed by how much information I can access from the desk of my wooden-floored little south Thailand pad. Yesterday morning before breakfast, I was able to read up on Geoff Dyer's Yoga for People Who Can't Be Bothered to Do It, download Stephen Malkmus's latest, listen to a recent installment of public radio's excellent This American Life, and read an essay by the ever-brilliant Ian Buruma.

I've found, in fact, that I read more from the periodical world than I do when I'm in less isolated places. During shorter stints in Bangkok, for example, I'll...

...typically check the headlines, drop in at CNN and Salon and the New York Times, check the World Hum blog for travel articles, glance at the hometown newspaper (and, once it becomes available online, the hometown newspaper's competition) and get up to speed on the latest nonsense from The Onion. Occasionally, I'll check and see what friends are up to, or what's happening in my old expat roost.

In Ranong, however -- perhaps because of the subconscious knowledge that there are no decent libraries, newsstands, or bookstores within a few hundred miles -- I find myself spending more time looking for online readings. Sure, I'll check magazines that I read in corporeal form, such as the Economist, but I've also been digging into The Guardian, the Washington Post, the Village Voice, The Atlantic, the London Review of Books, and (for the commie pinko angle) AlterNet. The New York Review of Books is always great, as are the New Yorker and (just to be ride that provincial vibe) the New York Times Magazine. Occasionally I'll come across cool homegrown sites for book news or author interviews. A great clearinghouse for such highbrow online reading (naturally I'm not mentioning my predilection for porn, the Internet Anagram Server, or the Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf fansite) is the excellent Art and Letters Daily.

I know this is all pretty mainstream reading material -- but the point is that I didn't read these magazines and newspapers much before I found their online form in the isolation of southern Thailand. Any other suggestions for my online reading room here in the jungle? (And please, no porn, anagram, or Iraqi information minister fansite suggestions -- I already know about them!)