MEDIA DIET
By:
April 20, 2026
A weekly series exploring the media “input” of a group of people — HILOBROW’s friends and contributors — whose “output” we admire.
Annie has been a valued HILOBROW contributor since 2009. Her first post was on the topic of ROMAN POLANSKI. Her most recent contributions to this publication include: MEDIUM COOL | MISS JAMAICA | THUMB-PUMP OILER.
New York City…
HILOBROW: What forms of media do you “take in” the most regularly/frequently, during a typical day or week?
ANNIE NOCENTI: As a lifelong storyteller and voracious knowledge junky, I live with thousands of books, many of which feel like dear friends. I read newspapers online and travel with magazines. In reading non-fiction, ideas drift in, lodge as barnacles in the mind, engage with emotions, and eventually come out in stories. If something sparks, I try to get off consuming and on to writing. When a door opens, walk through it. I use podcasts to free up my hands to draw, cook, walk while learning, anything to break the spell of mesmerizing screens and get out in the natural world.
HILOBROW: What work of literature (old or new) would you recommend to someone trying to make sense of today’s world?
ANNIE NOCENTI: James by Percival Everett, the story of Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn as told by runaway slave Jim, a transfixing read which gives visceral insight into today’s intractable, systemic racism.
HILOBROW: What work of nonfiction (old or new) would you recommend to someone trying to make sense of today’s world?
ANNIE NOCENTI: Priestdaddy by Patrica Lockwood (2017) is an inspiring memoir of Lockwood’s religious upbringing’s impact on her. “Part of what you have to figure out in this life is, who would I be if I hadn’t been frightened? What hurt me, and what would I be if it hadn’t?” Her portrait of “The Portal” describes the Internet as more of a living entity than a repository for information. It’s a quietly hilarious book, recommended for understanding the grip of the web.
Kara Swisher’s 2024 Burn Book offers insight into the rise of tech billionaires. Swisher’s reporting from the early 1990s to the present illuminates the greedy, sociopathic forces which shape our current world. She’s blunt, funny, angry and doesn’t mind burning bridges. “What struck me was how easily people could be manipulated by fear and rage,” Swisher writes, “and how facts could be destroyed without repercussions.”
HILOBROW: Do you subscribe to any magazines or newsletters that you’d strongly recommend?
ANNIE NOCENTI: Heather Cox Richardson’s Letters from an American newsletter continues to be a sharp bellwether on current politics.
HILOBROW: How do you use social media, these days?
ANNIE NOCENTI: Instagram, mostly. I follow art, film, science, nature, and the accounts of friends. I recommend @weratedogs for wit and humor. There are surprising gifts on social media. In the years before his death, filmmaker Amos Poe’s Instagram was a visionary masterclass in how to die with generosity and grace.
HILOBROW: What’s the best TV series you’ve ever seen?
ANNIE NOCENTI: Not sure I can pinpoint “best” TV, as sometimes nothing will do but an old episode of Seinfeld or Twilight Zone. Early HBO is reliably great and re-watchable. The Wire leaps to mind. Deadwood (David Milch) is a stellar ride. I love the highfalutin gutter-speak of the script, the feeling of being in the yearning muck of a 1870s gold rush town, and the machinations of a pioneer town trying to forestall the inevitable coming of so-called civilization. And while it’s a man’s world, there’s a sly undercurrent of women biding their time as they watch men decide their fate, “If we didn’t hate them too much to be curious about the world, we’d wonder what they had to say.”
HILOBROW: What’s the best movie you’ve seen recently?
ANNIE NOCENTI: Bugonia (Yorgos Lanthimos, Will Tracy) which, at the risk of being self-serving, felt like an embrace of my own graphic novel The Seeds (with art by David Aja), a satisfying echo chamber of like-mindedness. Both use bees as a metaphor, and aliens come to earth to discover if humans are a salvageable race. All the arts can do this — a creation may not be to everyone’s taste, but art is not crafted to please everyone, it’s meant to reach whoever it resonates with.
HILOBROW: Share a media “input” of yours that wasn’t listed above.
ANNIE NOCENTI: Comics, most recently It’s Never Easy by Joe Alterio, a panoramic pandemic memoir, a perfect gem of solace which unfolds in precise filmic frames of insight to mimic how time dripped during lockdown. Also, Goes Like This by J. Crane, collected short stories which wrench a sad poem out of the times we live in.
MEDIA DIET series: MATTHEW BATTLES | DEB CHACHRA | ADRIENNE CREW | HOLLY INTERLANDI | CAROLYN KELLOGG | MARK KINGWELL | ADAM McGOVERN | CHARLIE MITCHELL | TOM NEALON | PEGGY NELSON | ANNIE NOCENTI | GARY PANTER | LYNN PERIL | JONATHAN PINCHERA | HEATHER QUINLAN | NICHOLAS ROMBES | CARLO ROTELLA | LUCY SANTE | SETH | MIKE WATT | JUDITH ZISSMAN | & more to come! Visit the SERIES INDEX.