Back home and there's three weeks worth of magazines to read. I love the luxury of piling them up and going through them over the next few days. We get a lot of magazines. Some I never get to. The pile included The New Yorker (3), The New York Review of Books (2), Real Simple, Bon Appetite, Cooks Illustrated, EW (2), Atlantic Monthly, Newsweek (2), Vegetarian Times (no, we're not but Megan is). We also get Crimespree, Deadly Pleasures, a gardening magazine or two and more I'm probably forgetting. (Those cooking and gardening magazines are my husband's.)What magazines do you get? Maybe we're missing some good ones. Is magazine reading dying off as more and more publications are zines?
15 comments:
I recently subscribed to Black Gate, and a convention threw in a free Realms of Fantasy subscription. My parents gave us National Geo for Christmas--Larry reads them, I haven't been--and Newsweek came as a fund drive thank you, though neither of us bothers to read it much.
A few years ago we had subscriptions to some other SF/F magazines. I fell behind and never ended up catching up and Larry was generally dissatisfied with the stories, so we didn't bother to renew. I buy sample issues of genre magazines from time to time, so there's a small press sampler in the powder room.
And at least in my case, my changing magazine reading patterns are related to:
a. my life
b. personal preference re: content
We had several SF/F subscriptions when I was in high school, and I read a lot of short fiction along with novels, though interesting anthologies were few and far between. In college, my recreational reading was pretty much just novels; it seemed to fit my mood/schedule better. After I graduated, along with novels I read the late-90s batch of webzines: easy lunchtime reading and market research. I picked up print mag subs again during that period, and I'd have dropped them even if I wasn't reading webzines.
FANTASY & SCIENCE FICTION (though REALMS OF FANTASY is prettier once past the cover, and the covers have been improving), ALL HALLOWS and CEMETERY DANCE among the horror-fiction magazines, ONTARIO REVIEW and BOULEVARD among the eclectic littles (BOULEVARD has excellent covers and atrocious proofreading...A PUBLIC SPACE isn't quite up to the old PARIS REVIEW, but it's closer than the current PARIS REVIEW...I'd like to see more issues of BLACK CLOCK). EQMM, THE STRAND, and AHMM when I can find the latter on a newsstand JAZZ TIMES and DOWNBEAT. THE PROGRESSIVE and THE NATION (I really miss SOCIAL ANARCHISM and OUR GENERATION, and should be subbing to FREEDOM), HARPER'S (I pretty much get only the fiction special issue of THE ATLANTIC these days). VIDEO WATCHDOG and SIGHT AND SOUND when I can find the latter. PHOTO (the French original--gorgeous even beyond the nudes, and far more interesting than the US cousin), NEW SCIENTIST and DISCOVER occasionally. BUST and BITCH, ESQUIRE. ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY (not really a favorite, but I read my housemate's copy every week pretty quickly.)
Great ideas here for Xmas presents here. Todd-how do you ever cover so many even sporadically. Cemetery Dance is a great idea. I forgot they were print.
Newsweek-I only read the cultural parts and my husband reads the news but it takes neither of us more than ten minutes.
I used to get a lot of the lit journals, but no more.
I love MENTAL FLOSS. So much neat information about so many subjects. Really a great read.
Entertainment Weekly is my window into pop culture. I believe everything in it.
I also like that it's oneof the only entertainment magazines that has book reviews.
And I like the snarky TV listings.
Okay R2-you're much too original for me. I've gotta look that one up.
John-But is the book coverage shrinking. The one I just read hardly had any. It also disappeared from metacritic lately.
Here's their website if you want to check them out:
http://www.mentalfloss.com/magazine/issues/0606.php
The Economist, CrimeSpree, Murdaland, and Out Of The Gutter. Everything else I read is online.
Oh, how could I forget Murdaland. Shame. I have both copies sitting across the room. It's kind of more a book than a magazine to me.
Thanks for the site, R2. I'll check it out...now.
I'm also a big fan of both MURDALAND and OUT OF THE GUTTER. I also like the OXFORD REVIEW, especially the music issue.
Well, here's another vote for MURDALAND, though if the current trend continues, the fifth issue will be five pages long. Haven't dug out GUTTERS yet, though it looks promising, if that's the right word. (And if you're looking for gifts, Patti, among the fiction magazines you might also look at the Wildside group--FANTASY, WEIRD TALES, LOVECRAFT'S...albeit their titles can be sporadically issued, and also ZOETROPE ALL-STORY, another good and pretty fm). One kind of magazine I hadn't mentioned--I get LOVE AND ROCKETS for myself and the new BUFFY comics for my housemate (when she hasn't picked one up for herself). Btw, what's happening to magazines is at least trifold, aside from competition for attention (to say nothing of disposable income): distribution, mailing costs and the spreading-thin of advertising, though the last hits some magazines harder than others (a fourth fold,to some extent, is costs of production, though certain aspects there get cheaper and easier while others go up and up). The fiction magazines don't get a hell of a lot of ads to begin with, but the music magazines I read, and general-interest magazines like HARPER'S and to some extent ESQUIRE are heavily ad-dependent. The collapse of distributors (and the lack of interest of the remainder in treating smaller-circulation magazines equitably) and mailing costs hit the unsubsidized fiction magazines and to a lesser extent the institutional littles pretty hard. And I read impulsively but whenever I can, and spend too much on magazines, but what is working one's self to death good for if one doesn't enjoy one's self a good few hours of the day? For me, MENTAL FLOSS, like UTNE READER and ROSEBUD, has been better in theory than in execution, but it's a good hypothesis.
Do people expect magazine to look sexier than a generation ago? This must add to the cost. The format of some are off-putting to me. When they have lots of stories on one page-up and down the margins, written on slants....
Utne I tried and never read a single issue in the year I got it. It was like taking the people I work with home with me at night.
People that depress and worry me.
RADAR, the first (iirc) newsstand magazine so art-directed that it was intentionally illegible, has been unfortunately more influential than it should be. Happily, it died quick, despite attempts at revival. I think the joy of sidebars and other clutter reassures advertisers and gives makeup people something to do, but there are those magazines that have fetishized white space, too.
UTNE READER always has been more "hip" than smart or good. But at least it did turn me onto OUR GENERATION back in '84.
I see I was incorrect, at least to the extent that there's another RADAR, a rather conventional "celebrity" magazine, now on newsstands. And FANTASY from the Wildside group is going all virtual, as they also get raady to suspend their extrememely infrequent revival of STRANGE TALES.
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