What Magazines Do You Read?
The Chicago Tribune asks is staffers every year to name their favorite magazines.
(Registration necessary – ARGH)
It’s becoming a rite of summer: Every year we ask each other what periodicals we’ve been reading, and then we ask you. Every year we argue about what makes a good magazine and why we rush to pick up certain titles or swipe them from a neighbor’s desk. We urge each other to try something new, and we smack our foreheads when a title bubbles up that we’d completely missed.
This year we’ve been paying special attention to media on the Internet. Most magazines have a Web presence, but we’ve picked out five sites that offer something special, something more than the same content we read in print. Take a look and see what you think — and please tell us what’s on your personal magazine rack these warm summer days.
I like to skim the women’s magazines that my wife gets, Golf for Women, Redbook, and Martha Stewart Living. She gets a boatload of craft and knitting magazines too that I ignore.
Here are the magazines that I read pretty thoroughly during the course of a month.
- Esquire
- Car and Driver
- Forbes
- AARP
- Stuff
- ESPN
- Maxim
- Consumer Reports
- TV Guide
- Islands
- Money
Parade, American Profile, and Relish come with the newspaper and I read those too.
Here’s some of the more unusual magazines the Tribune news staff looks at along with their comments.
- Granta. Combine fiction, fine photography and collections of essays, and what do you get? Brilliance, if it’s Granta.
- The New York Review of Books. This ancient, much-revered and now iconic magazine is still the gold standard for serious cultural criticism.
- Blueprint. From the Martha Stewart empire, her latest guide to personal style puts an emphasis on easy step-by-steps.
- Juxtapoz. The “lowbrow” art bible for those who love artists on the pop fringe.
- Paste. Too young for Rolling Stone but not young enough for Blender? Then Paste probably speaks to you.
- Lincoln Lore. With the bicentennial of Abraham Lincoln’s birth looming in 2009, where better to get the scoop on the 16th president than this quarterly publication of the Lincoln Museum in Ft. Wayne, Ind.?
- MAGIC. Because magicians are so secretive about their craft to begin with, it’s appropriate that this monthly glossy is not available at a newsstand or library – it’s only sold at magic shops and through subscription.
Out of the entire list in their article, there are only a handful that you would consider mainstream. But I give them credit for at least being open enough to try something new from time to time.
What magazines do you read?
How great it is that your kids get their own mags.
And I’m not sure you screwed up the itals, lots of extra funky code on the post.
I’m seeing larger than normal quoted text.
Let’s blame wordpress!
Last comment. (Someone stop me before I screw up again.)
(Btw, isn’t it annoying when someone fills up your comments page with stupidity??)
Wow, did I ever mess up the italics on that last post, lol.
When our Girl Scout troop sold magazines last fall, I bought a subscription to Reader’s Digest,/i> for myself. (I have yet to read a single one.) I somehow ended up with a subscription to the free magazine put out by Kraft, Food and Family,/i> or something like that, but I usually just pull out the coupons and toss the magazine in the rack. My husband subscribes to Outdoor Living and some kind of ATV mag. The kids get Disney Adventures, Nick Magazine and Highlights High Five. Oh and because I won a category at the Okie Blogger Round-up last fall, I won a subscription to Oklahoma Today.
Out of all those magazines that come into my house, the only one I read is Highlights High Five because my 5-year-old can’t read yet and I end up reading it to her. That Spot is one funny puppy.
You are easily impressed! 🙂 I love to read all different kinds of magazines. I usually use airline miles to get free subscriptions.
You’re one sophisticated dude! I used to read millions of mags. I grew up with a dad who sold newspaper and magazines for living. Today I read just the NY Times Book Review, New York magazine, People (I once wrote for them, so don’t make any jokes about this), and assorted other mags that I see in the library. I am a magazine junkie, so I keep my subscriptions to a minimum.