Open Thread: Best Magazine Reads?

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So here's something that I'm curious about and thought we'd discuss… what magazines do you guys read on a regular basis? Do you feel like the Internet has changed the time you spend with a magazine — or is a hot bath or a long flight still not the same without your favorite pile of mags? Does anyone use the iPad apps? Which magazines do you enjoy the most?

{related: what media do you pay for? (2021 discussion)}

For my own $.02… you're talking to someone whose major was magazine journalism, so I always have and always will love the medium. One of my favorite scenes in Working Girl is when Tess describes how her reading two wildly different publications gave her a great idea related to business, and I've always tried to take that approach.

{related: here's our discussion of the movie Working Girl}

I remember in college, going to Barnes and Noble, getting a huge stack of magazines, and sitting down to pore over them. In my early 20s, when I worked for Family Circle, the editor in chief had me read about 30 magazines a week and flag things of interest to her, either in terms of story ideas for the magazine or things she ought to know generally as the editor of a major magazine.

{related: Kat's first seven jobs}

When I left for law school that dwindled to personally reading about 15 a month… and now I'm down to about 5 a month, maybe. I hate recycling unread magazines, and I'm just not in a place anymore where I want to keep large unread piles of magazines anymore, so I keep unsubscribing.

I still subscribe to the following:

Entrepreneurial reads:  Inc.  Love the magazine — but they have a lot of content available online. I also get Fast Company; lots of great reads. I always recommend these magazines to women who think they might have an entrepreneurial bent — it's one of the cheapest and easiest ways to encourage yourself.

I subscribed to Forbes for a while, but I ultimately felt like I preferred the servicey, how-to vibe from Inc. far better than the “profiles of titans of industry” feel to Forbes. Wired isn't really an entrepreneurial read, but I loved that one because I always felt very inspired by all that talk of the tech world. They have a lot of content online as well, though, so I unsubscribed.

Healthy Lifestyle Reads: Self. I prefer this one to Women's Health, but with any eat-right-work-out-more magazine the stories are going to repeat, often… I signed up for Men's Health for my husband, and found that is a really excellent magazine — I'm currently trying to figure out whether or not to keep my subscription.

I also get Weight Watchers Magazine (lots of good recipes). For a while I got Cooking Light, as well as Taste of Home's lower-calorie magazine (Light & Tasty, maybe?) — both are excellent, but I primarily use the Internet for my source of new recipes, now. Oh! And Nutrition Action Newsletter — I love this one, which contains lots of scientific-y looks at what the best cereal is, whether vitamins are really bad for you, etc.

Women's Magazines:  I love Real Simple and O, The Oprah Magazine — I feel like both have reasonable fashion choices, solid self-help advice, and that both are beautiful to look at.

Shopping/Fashion Magazines:  I still subscribe to Lucky, which I have always liked, even when it swung too far in the boho direction. I also try to look through Elle, which I get sent every month because I'm part of the Elle/Style Coalition ad network, and I'm always amazed at the good reads in it. I always think of Vanity Fair as the fashion magazine with the best reads — that's my splurge at the airport newstand.

I love to look at Vogue but in all my years subscribing to it I found exactly one spread of clothes that I might want to wear, and unsubscribed after I realized that. I liked Marie Claire for a while — that is supposedly the thinking woman's fashion magazine — but I never found anything that was a “must read” and so I wound up unsubscribing to that one also.

Career Advice Magazines.  I get Working Mother, and highly recommend it to those of you with kids or thinking of having kids. I signed up for this before I got pregnant, in part to keep an eye on it for this blog, and it is an excellent magazine. At least at this point in my parenting journey, the advice is fresh and new, and they address a lot of great things about the juggle between motherhood and working.

 I must say, I also like subscribing to the men's magazines, if only to see the career and money advice that the guys are getting. I loved, loved, loved Esquire, but I finally unsubscribed since I just never got to all the lengthy, beautifully written articles in it.

I got Pink magazine for a while also, but it just felt like it was geared for much older women. Men's Health (mentioned above) had a bunch of great advice columns, a few of which I've linked to here.

Local Magazines: We still get New York magazine, but at this point we're just recycling them almost as soon as they come. We started because we felt like Time Out New York was too “young” for us; New York feels too old for us.

I suppose it's probably time that we subscribe to Time Out Kids or something like that. Sigh. I got The New Yorker for years and years and years and loved it, but always had huge piles of it whenever I moved… and I always felt like a pseudo-intellectual if I just read just the Shouts & Murmurs section and the comics and then recycled it.

I finally stopped getting it when I decided to get Business Week, which I had always loved — but the weeklies really kill you in terms of paper, so I could only keep one. (I no longer get either!)

Others Magazines:  I no longer get any design magazines. In the past I've gotten Elle Decor (love), Dwell (a wee bit highbrow for me), another highbrow one I'm totally blanking on, and Domino (may it rest in peace). I end up watching a lot of property/redesign shows on television as background noise, though, so maybe I'm getting my fill of it there.

We also don't get any entertainment magazines anymore. I love Entertainment Weekly, Us Magazine, and Rolling Stone, but I just don't have the time to read them! So I tend to be pretty woefully informed about what movie is coming out or what hot new show I should watch. Oh, and I'm also liking my subscription to Parenting Early Years.

So there you have it — I'm kind of a magazine nerd. How about you guys — what are your must-reads every month? How have your tastes changed over the years?

Updated images (blue and red magazines stacked) via Stencil 2021. Originally pictured: Magazine Logos by Jim Parkinson, originally uploaded from FontShop.) 

343 Comments

  1. Am I really the only person who doesn’t subscribe to magazines? I get Runner’s World but I never actually subscribed to it and although I agree it is very repetitive I still like flipping through it for a little inspiration and just seeing it in my stack of mail motivates me a bit to get moving. I enjoy some of the magazines mentioned but not enough to seek them out on a regular basis so I think I am just not really a magazine person. I will also say – and I don’t mean this in any kind of derogatory way – I just don’t get the obsession people have with gossip magazines like People and Us Weekly. I realize everyone has their guilty pleasures but this one just baffles me since I can’t relate at all. But since it feels like nearly everyone I know loves them I start to wonder if I’m the only one who just doesn’t care.. . . am I alone here?

    1. People and Us Weekly are like celeb-reality shows. You either love ’em or hate ’em.

      I don’t subscribe but I love reading them on airplanes, trains, the beach … etc.

    2. US Weekly is my brain candy. I used to come home from law school on a Friday afternoon and lay on my couch and read it. Total therapy. But I know some people don’t get it. And DH hates it with a passion.

    3. I don’t subscribe to anything either, I’m much more used to reading articles online anyway. I always think that eventually (when I magically have more free time and money, fat chance) I will subscribe to some news magazines that I like to read online like the Economist or the Atlantic, but that may or may not happen. I’ve never even considered subscribing to a fashion or celebrity magazine. I’m with you – I find them pretty uninteresting. Every once in awhile I’ll pick one up in a waiting room or something and try to like it, but it’s just not something I can bring myself to focus on at all because I really just don’t care about the content.

      1. i don’t subscribe to any. rather against the women’s ones for handful of reasons noted by other commenters. that said, i look at them in the doctor’s office etc. used to love travel mags for flying, but now pregnant, they just feel like taunts. used to like news ones, don’t have the energy for those. we got Inc and Money this year for free and 90% went into recycling- just didn’t get to them- when did, read a few interesting things. i read a lot of mags i get professionally, but more in a skimming way.

        husband likes NG, so i flip through that at home.

        seattle lawyers- anyone else detest the bar mag as much as my spouse and i? really wish we could get back the money they spend on that piece o’sh*t.

  2. I have a related question — I recently wrote a 4-page article about a medical issue, women’s health-related, based on my own personal experience. I would love to get it published in a widely read women’s magazine, but I only subscribe to Vogue and Real Simple, and don’t feel like it fits in either of those. I think many readers would find it very interesting.

    For those of you who read many more magazines than I do, can you suggest magazines where I might submit my article? I would really appreciate any thoughts.

    Thanks!!

    1. Self. Maybe even Glamour if the article/issue skews young – I remember a while ago they did a series on a young woman with leukemia who was among the first people to be treated with Gleevec. I think there’s a magazine called Health or maybe Women’s Health. If it’s sufficiently maudlin and navel-gazing (hope I don’t offend you), it could go to Real Simple.

      And I say that as someone who just subscribed to and rather enjoys Real Simple.

  3. I have a subscription to the Economist. My husband likes the print version, and I like the iPad app. It’s become a regular Christmas gift from my in-laws (father-in-law and I are both economists). Otherwise, I read People sometimes when I see it in waiting rooms, etc. I have been thinking about subscribing to Fitness/Shape/Self or something for some post-baby exercise motivation. Otherwise, when I do have time to read, I guess I just prefer a good book! Put my Kindle in the waterproof case, and I can even take it in the bathtub!

  4. We subscribe to Entertainment Weekly (my pick) and the Economist (my husband’s pick). I read EW cover to cover every week, and yet somehow I just never seem to find the time to even open the Economist… Funny how that happens, right?

  5. I read on Apartment Therapy that Domino is coming out with a special edition… Here’s hoping it possibly becomes a quarterly thing.

  6. I forgot to mention my newest addiction — longform.org. You can find all sorts of really good writing there, from a nice variety of sources. I’m using Readability to save the articles off to my Kindle.

  7. I subscribe to:
    The Economist – I use their dedicated iPad app
    Wired – I use their dedicated iPad app
    Lucky – There is no iPad app, but I just decided to subscribe because I buy it like twice a year and I saw a 3 year subscription for 15 dollars.

    I also use the Zinio magazine app, and I have a bunch of magazines that I subscribe to through it, including:
    Dwell
    Living Etc.- a british modern design mag
    Oxygen – women’s weight-lifting mag
    Esse – kind of a Japanese Real Simple that I use to practice reading in Japanese

  8. Cooks Illustrated, Newsweek (free with NPR pledge), San Francisco magazine (once free with NPR pledge and now the renwal rate is super cheap), and we used to take the Economist on one of those $1 an issue deals sometimes in the banner ads on the NYT website. I freaking love Cooks Illustrated. I also inconsistently read my mom’s recent Sunset magazines after she’s done with them.

    I took Real Simple for years, but cancelled the subscription after I noticed that they were basically repeating articles I had seen in the magazine a few years before. I also increasingly felt like I was not the target demographic for Real Simple.

    The fashion magazines drive me crazy, with completely useless fashion ideas, overpriced clothing that will be out of style in a hot minute, and so many freaking ads. The “fitness” ones are worse – lose weight this way! nine evil foods that are preventing you from a perfect ___! inspirational story of a woman who used to be “fat” and/or “lazy” and now she’s perfectly fit and thin! And I won’t touch a lady mag like Cosmo with a ten foot pole.

    1. I love Cooks Illustrated too. It appeals to my inner geek. I just got a groupon deal for San Francisco magazine as well, since I end up buying it quite often.

    2. SF Bay Associate: I get giddy when my Cook’s Illustrated arrives each month! I read it cover to cover, even if I don’t think I’ll like the recipes, because I love the method and science behind each article.

    3. Ah, so THAT’S how I started getting Newsweek in the mail! My DH and I couldn’t figure it out because we never subscribed to it. I really like the magazine, although their blatant left wing agenda can get a little old (and I’m pretty progressive).

  9. Currently subscribe: New Yorker, New York Mag, US Weekly

    Unsubscribed: Vanity Fair, Elle, Vogue, Allure (mostly because no time to read and too heavy to haul around)

    DH: London Review of Books, New York Review of Books, and Harpers

  10. New Yorker/Atlantic/Esquire/Economist and the like fans, you really need to check out http://longform.org/. Longform posts the best new and classic non-fiction long form articles from all kinds of magazines. It is the greatest thing ever. EVER!

    1. OMG . . . this may be lifechanging. Bad to discover when I’m slow at work . . .

      1. Similarly — there is a free app called Zite that compiles various great reads targeted to your specific interests. It’s fantastic, esp. on the ipad (though the iphone version is also easy to navigate).

  11. My favorite magazine is Better Homes & Gardens – it’s beautiful and it just puts me in a great mood every time I sit down to read it. It makes having a beautiful, organized life seem doable for a mere mortal like me :)

    Other than that, I just read the gazillion magazines my boyfriend gets – I can’t stand to add one more subscription to the towering stack that’s always here. My favorites among those are Esquire and Wired, and the last page of Entertainment Weekly.

    If my beloved Domino comes back, I will subscribe immediately.

  12. I am a bit of a magazine wh)re, have been since the days of Seventeen and Mademoiselle.
    Subsribe to

    Real Simple
    InStyle
    Lucky
    Fast Company
    Essence
    Travel and Leisure
    Bon Apetit
    Marie Claire
    Oprah
    Elle Decor

    I always manage to luck out on those get a year’s subscription for five dollars offers and participate in an on line marketing program that gives you points, which I redeem for mag subscriptions. I usually wait until of my mags have arrived for the current month and spend a Sunday afternoon and browse through them all while drinking a glass or two of wine. Once I’m done with them I gather them up and drop them off at a local hospital.

    I really miss Domino, Blueprint and Budget Living.

  13. If you have a kid in middle school, they sell magazine subscriptions (at least here in GA). So at one point, I think we got about 15 magazines/month! Now, that the kid is in high school, I’ve decided to simplify. Plus I read a lot of articles online now.

    Currently Subcribe:
    Garden & Gun: if you have never seen/heard of this magazine, go find a copy! Supposedly the new generation Southern Living. It is beautiful and has wonderful stories, even if you aren’t from the South. and no, it is not all about gardens & guns (but sometimes is).

    Better Homes & Gardens and This Old House: I can flip through these easily and get good ideas, even though I rarely follow through on them. This Old House is better than “BH&G” in some respects if you really do have an old house because they recognize NOTHING in your house is standard.

    Atlanta Magazine: good local info

    Sports Illustrated, ESPN Magazine – mainly for hubs, but I read about teams/people I like.
    Cooking Light – again mainly for hubs (I don’t cook, but he likes it — still miss Gourmet though, and Bon Appetit wasn’t even remotely the same).

    Used to subscribe to Marie Claire (never would wear the clothes; too repetitive on other topics; plus had a weird dating column that I was afraid for my daughter to find!); Runners World (too repetitive, but glad to see info above on Running Times); Entertainment Weekly (loved, but couldn’t keep up w/ a weekly); Time (same); Rolling Stone (good stories, but couldn’t read fast enough).

    I don’t have an iPad, but might switch some of these to internet subscriptions if I did (iPhone screen too small for that). But I do like the feel of magazines in general. and would LOVE a Corporette magazine.

  14. Metropolis! Metropolis is the only affordable, non-pretentious architecture magazine I’ve found. They also cover design & urban planning topics. It’s a great magazine, and I’m sad I rarely have time to read it now.

  15. The only monthly subscriptions I currently have are comic books (I read exclusively DC Comics, my husband reads Marvel & DC). I read probably 10 or so a month, sometimes more, and they’re a serious addiction for me.

    It’s not the most mature hobby, I guess, but I also have a Batman lunchbox, so maturity can suck it. I figure I make up for it in doing my job with great efficiency.

    I do want to start reading some more grown-up stuff (I’m 24, so even though I’ve been working in corporate support for 4 years, I’m only just getting into business for real), but I stick to online sources. I have so much junk mail… ugh. I read TheJaneDough and TheMarySue online, as well as TheSuperficial, Geekologie and IWatchStuff, but they’re all daily.

    I like brief articles with lots of facts, and I love fashion and stuff that involves social issues in business. Blurbs and articles under 2 pages are my thing. I kind of get into some of the stuff Cosmo writes, but I get inundated with how busy the magazine is. Any suggestions for something approachable for a 20-something, but not too highbrow?

    1. OH CAN WE BE FRIENDS? I want to start reading comic books but I’m too intimidated by how many choices are out there. Can you recommend something witty/hilarious?

      1. Witty/hilarious is a tough call – most of DC is all doooom dooom. I know pretty much anything with Deadpool (Marvel) is hilarious – he’s got his own comic, I believe, and there’s also a graphic novel out there called Deadpool Team-Ups or something of the like, and it’s excellently funny (includes a vampire cow).

        As far as *good*ness, I find that the Batwoman comic has the most beautiful art of any comic currently running, and the story is fantastic. I also really am enjoying the current Batman, Batgirl, Teen Titans, Batman: Detective Comics, Nightwing, Action Comics, and The Flash. I’m also reading Superboy and Birds of Prey, which are not quite as brilliant as the others, but are enjoyable (and Superboy ties in to Teen Titans).

        My husband is currently reading Magneto: Not a Hero and Uncanny X-Force. The latter he says is quite brilliant and had good art up until the most recent issue, which was really unfortunate.

        That’s probably a lot more than you wanted to hear, haha. I’m a DC fangirl and I stick to mainstream work, so there are probably more places to get your info. I know Bleeding Cool and The Mary Sue talk about comics a lot, so there’s a place to start! :D

        1. Oh, this is great! Thanks for responding, I’m definitely gonna check out some of your recs.

        2. I have also been wanting to start regularly reading comics (mid-20s lawyer here – no apologies :)) and appreciate the suggestions!

  16. For some reason, I want to say “Horse and Hound” (Notting Hill, anyone?)

    When I get home from work, I don’t want to read anything “smart”, so it is usually People or O – my husband subscribes to “This Old House” magazine, and I like that one, too!

  17. I subscribe to British food magazines BBC Good Food and Delicious. Then I pick up a couple of magazines for when I travel – this will typically include Red and Marie Claire, plus anything else that looks interesting in the store when I pick them up. I’ve got magazines on everything such as history, news, technological stuff, health, writing and travel.

    I used to subscribe to a couple of celebrity magazines in Danish and French, but as they were weeklies, I had no time to read them.

    Two-three magazines a month is about what I have time to look through, as long as I want to do other things after work…

  18. House Beautiful is my favorite. We used to take Architectural Digest, but the prose was getting a little too wacky (reading like a Mad Lib where your only adjective choices were pretentious) and the design and decor beyond reach (kind of like how previous commenters have discussed fashion mags making them feel poor/fat/etc – AD was making me feel like I lived in a hovel and always would live in a hovel and couldn’t do anything to make my hovel pretty). House Beautiful is still aspirational, but more on my level, and it’s instructional.

    Cuisine At Home. Best. Cooking. Magazine. Ever. No ads, the recipes run from half hour family favorites to full five-course gourmet meals, great practical tips, fully illustrated, and nothing too difficult or esoteric.

    Bon Appetit. This was a gift. I don’t care for it – unlike Cuisine at Home, the recipes run between multiple pages (meaning I can’t rip a page out and have it contain an entire recipe) and 9 out of 10 recipes either call for some crazy ingredient only found in the Himalayas or the Amazon (and don’t provide a substitute) or call for like 8 hours of hands on prep time. I mostly now just look at the pictures.

    Our local city mag. Love it for the political backstories, the new restaurant reviews, and the history.

    When I travel I buy Vanity Fair.

    1. House Beautiful should not be so overlooked! It’s such a perfect magazine if you love decor and are in your early 30s. I have kind of outgrown Apartment Therapy and the overly cheap DIY aesthetic (although I still take spray paint to the occasional planter or picture frame). And I will never own a Tuscan Villa as a second home, which is all Architectural Digest is good for. Elle Decor is also fun, but a little fluffier, and more trendy.

  19. The magazines I love to read:

    B)tch
    Bust
    Interweave Knits
    Wired
    Mental Floss
    Muscle & Fitness Hers

  20. Monocle is so privileged and pompous, and sometimes seems like it tries to go out of its way not to come across as colonialist, but I love it so.

    1. I agree on all counts! If only it weren’t so expensive. I used to linger at Borders with the new issues — love the infographics.

  21. im a total elitest: i subscribe to the New Yorker, even tho I live in California. yeah, that’s me. But also, I have used extra airline miles to get free subscriptions to other magazines, and that’s fun. I like Harper’s Bazaar, Elle Decor and travel magazines: Conde Nast Traveler and Afar. I have been thinking about the Smithsonian, but haven’t subscribed yet.

    I used to subscribe to B*tch and Bust, but haven’t for a while.

    1. Glad to know I’m not the only Mother Jones fan here :) I also get Vanity Fair as a Christmas gift from my grandma, and I’m a big fan of them both.

  22. I usually only subscribe to magazines when I need to keep my airline points in check or I earn funny money off of e-rewards. Here’s my list right now:
    Martha Stewart Living – also free on iPad
    Everyday Food (Martha Stewart) – free on iPad
    Vogue
    InStyle
    Everyday with Rachael Ray
    Food and Wine on the iPad (sharing my sister in law’s subscription – she gets the magazine, I have the iPad version)

    I’m shocked more people haven’t caught onto the iPad subscriptions. They really are cool, to see demonstrations. And you don’t have to worry about the card inserts or the perfume samples (yuck).

  23. I like Real Simple, In Style, and BurdaStyle – a German sewing pattern magazine that is shot like a fashion mag, but with the patterns & instructions on how to make the garments included. It’s expensive ($9/issue to subscribe) but if I make an average of 2 items from each magazine (which I don’t quite do), it’s worth it, and I love having a library of patterns to choose from when I want to sew.

  24. Advice/encouragement on how to maintain a healthy(ish) lifestyle on a business trip? We’re pulling 14 hour plus days so I barely have time to sleep, but most of the group still wants to go out and have drinks all across the city after work some days. I’m trying my best to continue to work out, so grabbing even one drink means that I either lose the sleep or lose my workout time. It’s also difficult to resist the bad food that seems to be ever-present and the peer pressure to eat it. I really don’t want to let this week derail my efforts to lead a healthier lifestyle, but I also don’t want to seem like a prude. TIA!

    1. sadly no- it is really, really hard especially abroad! domestic, i pack or pick up healthy things at whole foods etc. it is tough to turn down those sugary treats provided at coffee breaks etc. why can’t they put out healthy food?? somehow, we all have to start demanding that.

      sometimes I skip the least important session or whatever to pop up to a gym, or just before the transition to dinner/drinks from work meetings- helps if business is in same hotel you are staying at. not a morning person and as you say, don’t get enough sleep as is on those schedules + jetlag. also i try to walk outside, and get others to walk with me to dinner/meetings etc. i stretch on the plane every few hours. i do yoga stretches in my room, and even dance to ipod music a bit at times. 15 minutes can help a lot. kimpton chain hotels will bring you a fitness kit and some others.
      sometimes i skip the evening events. just need down time/sleep (or to catch up on emails).

      overall though- it is so hard to maintain a healthy sleep, eat and exercise schedule on busy business travel!!

      1. also another thing i do: get mini fridges in the hotel room. even if they aren’t in there they can usually bring one- if they resist tell them it’s for a medical reason. if there, i always have to empty it out. but this is key for storing healthy leftovers or stuff picked up from a grocery store. then if i go to a dinner etc where the food is crap i have a backup.

    2. Back in my 80 percent travel consulting days, I would drink a wide variety of beverages all day long: black coffee, coffee w skim milk, hot tea, water, vitamin water, sparkling water, diet pepsi, anything that struck my fancy. This helped keep me hydrated and mildly caffeinated while staving off hunger. Carrying granola bars and almonds was also helpful, making it easier to pass on junk food. I would also sometimes skip the post-work social stuff, drive myself to a grocery store to get a more normal meal or order a room service salad w protein. I won’t lie and say I exercised. Best case scenario was working on the laptop in the hotel room in various stretching/yoga-like positions and taking the stairs or longer routes around client offices.

  25. Might be too late to be interesting, but my two subscriptions are the New Yorker and MS Everyday Food.

    I’m surprised no one else has mentioned Everyday Food — it’s fantastic. I’ve gotten many other food magazines before (I have an aunt that gifts me a subscription to MS Living, Food Network Mag, etc., every holiday season) and this is the only one I from which I consistently actually cook. I also love that it’s small and I can shove it into my purse easily. And the fact that it uses simple real ingredients. Nothing is too unhealthy, there are various healthful recipes throughout but nothing calls for me to use fat free cheese or other synthetic crap (unlike most of the “healthy” cooking mags).

    The New Yorker is sometimes too much to get through but b/c the subscriptions gets you access to the archives on the iPad, I don’t feel bad tossing the issues quickly and just catch up on trips or at the beach.

    We used to also get the Economist (which I love) and Real Simple but now I just buy an Economist when I have the time to read it since a lot of it doesn’t seem timely after a while (unlike the New Yorker). RS just got on my nerves after a while. I don’t hate it but I think I like skimming it at my mother’s more than I like having it come to my door once a month. I just can’t relate to too much of it.

    My “treat” magazine, when I travel, is In Style. I will also read tabloids like US Weekly only at the nail salon or on line at the supermarket. I have no idea why but I just cannot bring myself to actually pay money for them.

  26. I’m surprised I haven’t seen McSweeney’s mentioned on this thread! It’s the quirkiest award-winning magazine out there and every issue is designed completely differently. It’s been on my wishlist forever, but since I move so frequently, I’ve been delaying getting a subscription.

    1. OH get it!!! I have been a subscriber for years (and the Believer, and I’m considering adding Lucky Peach). It’s so fun. I love when they do “alternate” formats (One several years ago was designed to look like a sheaf of junk mail).

  27. The only subscription I actually pay for is National Geographic, my long-time love.

    I steal my boyfriend’s GQ and Esquire. I subscribe to Conde Naste traveler using frequent flier miles. I will occasionally buy the Economist. When I go home to visit my parents, I steal the old issues of: Mental Floss (which is just fun), InStyle, and Garden & Gun.

  28. Only Runners World. Although I’ve been reading for two years and it is starting to get to that repetitive point… I may switch to Running Times when my subscription is up.

  29. We get The Economist, The New Yorker, Vogue, W, Dwell, and the local city magazine.

    Vogue, W, and Dwell are my subscriptions. The rest are my husband’s, but I read them.

    I used to get Real Simple, but it felt like a chore after a while. Will give Working Mother a try.

    When I travel, I often buy a copy of Town and Country and/or Vanity Fair. Makes me feel like an incredibly erudite snob. :o)

  30. The Week
    New Republic
    Atlantic Monthly
    Real Simple
    Harper’s
    Vanity Fair
    Atlanta
    . . . and I buy individual issues of cooking magazines (Cooking Light; Donna Hay; Bon Appetit; Everyday Food) regularly, but don’t subscribe to any.

  31. Oh, I forgot to mention that I still often pick up Popular Science and Popular Mechanics.
    I enjoy them quite a bit, actually, mostly because concept vehicles and tech blow my mind. :D

    Does anyone else read any crazy tech mags? I often feel alone as a girl reading them.

  32. National Geographic Traveler, industry mags, and local mags (although I hardly ever have time to read these). I used to subscribe to The Week, which I liked because it helped keep me current on what was going on in the world when I got too busy to pay attention (when I had time to read it!) and Runners World. Maybe I need to try Running Times!

    There are also probably 30 issues of Corporate Counsel, various bar association magazines, and the ACC Docket from the last 4 years in my inbox at work. Sigh.

  33. I subscribe to Harper’s Index, The Believer, and several literary journals (McSweeney’s, Tin House, and ZYZZYVA). I have an online subscription to Cook’s Illustrated/Cooks.com and the New Yorker so I can still access content but not have stacks and stacks of unread magazines accumulate in my house. I really like The Economist, but can’t read it faithfully enough to justify a subscription.

  34. I love magazines. I feel like subscriptions are a very cheap indulgence — plus it’s a way to get regular “real mail”! Well, sort of real. Current subscriptions:
    O, The Oprah Magazine (The one I most look forward to getting, and read cover to cover.)
    Real Simple (I agree that it’s often shilling very $$ products in the name of “simplifying.”)
    More
    Whole Living (MS)
    Yoga Journal
    Shape (Getting this free, and letting it run out b/c it bugs me that it’s now close to Cosmo.)
    Lucky
    In Style (Stopped for a while, and it because my every-time airport purchase, so re-upped.)
    House Beautiful
    Elle Decor
    Budget Travel (Great magazine!)
    Travel & Leisure
    Outside
    Entertainment Weekly (Oh, I also read most of this one each week.)
    Money (Letting this one go when my current subscription is up. Not much new in any issue.)

    DH subscribes to:
    Bon Appetit (I read most of these)
    Saveur (Ditto.)
    Wine Spectator
    Wine Enthusiast
    Bloomberg BusinessWeek
    Economist
    National Review
    American Spectator (We are on the opposite ends of the political spectrum.)
    Wired
    ESPN the Magazine

    In the past year or two, I’ve dropped Afar (new travel magazine), National Geographic Traveler, and Self. I’ll buy the occasional Pink, Marie Claire, Vogue or Elle for the plane (though I always regret the Elle, oddly). I loved Red when I got to buy it in London — wish they’d offer an iPad subscription!

  35. TK1 February 9, 2012 at 7:41 pm

    Ah the UK. My husband is originally from there and he’s lived here for about 10 years. Last time we visited we were shocked at the snobby, holier than thou attitude we experienced everywhere. I nearly got run over by 10 different carts in Tesco’s by people not even looking where they were going. It wasn’t like that 10 years ago.

    Sad to say it might be in part because you are an American. The Brits tend to have an idea that Americans don’t know anything about the rest of the world and are self centered (at least this is my husband’s family’s view anyway). It frustrates the hell out of me and I don’t even live there. Try to find a way to have fun with it by making up fun lies like everyone else suggests. Good luck!
    .
    TK1,

    I cannot answer you above so am hoping you will find this reply here below. Yes, there is prejudice against Americans from many Brits (although often veiled in that understated English way) and I have sometimes wondered if this drives some of what I experience.

    If you read the Daily Mail online you will see how so many in “Middle Britain” are fed up with the rudeness, self-centeredness, and boorishness that characterizes so much of contemporary Britisih society. I find myself nodding in agreement with so many of the comments made there. There is still a great deal of kindness in many Brits, but it is not so easy to find such people. When I do have a very pleasant encounter with a Brit who treats me with compassion and respect (for example, in a customer service setting) I will nearly always take the time to write a letter of praise to their company thanking them for their courtesy. I believe that good manners should be rewarded because they are so hard to find.

    My late husband was a Brit from the working class who came up through the ranks in academia (the hard sciences). He had no time for any of this nonsense either, but it did not bother him in the way it bothers me, perhaps because as a working class person he had lived it all his life and thought these people arrogant fools and not worth his time. He also knew how to read the social cues in a way that as an American I never will.

    1. I cannot find the article from the Daily Mail about the social psychologists who had studied the communication patterns and found that the affluent were much more rude in conversation than the less-affluent, but I did find this, and it is an interesting read:
      http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2076932/Poor-people-quicker-compassion-distress-rich.html

      It is always dangerous to paint with a broad brush and to generalize about any group of people instead of seeing people for what they are – individuals. With that said, one does, thorugh experience, collect data, and over time can come to certain generalizations based on those experiences.

      There are exceptions. For example, one of the kindest, most compassionate, and most self-effacing men I know is the son of two Medical Doctors and himself a graduate of a fancypants college. He treats everyone he meets with equal respect and dignity, regardless of who they are. But he is an outlier.

  36. Canuck here.
    I love Chatelaine. It has a bit of everything but I love it for the recipes. Canadian Living is another one that has quick, easy and healthy recipes.
    I also subscribe to National Geographic but honestly I like it for the photography.
    Although I don’t subscribe to it, my guilty pleasure is Cosmo.

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