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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.)
Carleton
I am big on magazines: New Yorker, Vanity Fair, W, Vogue, Elle, Harpar’s Bazaar, Interview and InStyle all come to my house. I read the Economist and NYmag online. I often fall behind so it gives me an excuse to stay in on a Saturday, flip through some glossies and veg.
ReverseSnob
Oxonian,
I’m judgmental but you are not despite rudely dismissing an entire group of people? You sound immature (for your declared age), arrogant and defensive. I’m in my mid-20s and I have plenty left to learn. I’m happy to admit it. But I would hate to be in my 50s and apparently have come through varied life experiences and to still be this thin skinned.
“I suspect but cannot confirm that this has everything to do with your personality and nothing to do with your social background or nationality.”
See, this is what I mean. You want to openly insult my personality.
For someone who claims she has a lot to learn you certainly don’t act like it.
You use extremely pejorative and inflammatory language to insult me in your opening shot, who has not even addressed you directly, and then you bristle and insult my personality again by referring to me as “arrogant” when I call you on it. As they say here what’s good for the goose is good for the gander.
You feel that somehow couching it indirectly is more polite. I’m guessing from your answers that you think it’s quite witty and clever. Honestly, I think it reads as rude and a bit silly. You seem defensive and hostile in all of your answers and your experiences do not chime in any way with mine (a working class person who has to traverse the UMCs and faced plenty of class discrimination).
That’s why they are my experiences – I never claimed they were yours. Yet you want to generalize your social interactions and your interpretations of them as somehow more relevant than mine simply because they are different. Are you able to recognize at your age that people can have difference experiences and interpret them in different ways, without one marginalizing the other? Perhaps you feel your Oxbridge education gives you the authority of final and superior interpretation? If not, from where do you derive this authority?
As to witty and clever – that’s largely a subjective thing. For example, “Oxtail” is Joycean and funny (and meant affectionately – I happen to love the place), but to you its “rude.” As an old Ivy-league educated boyfriend of mine used to say, “Harvard Schmarvard.” He had the ability to be self-effacing about these things.
I spent a lot of time being offended and annoyed and when I grew up I realized that people are people. Rude people are rude, no matter what their class. Respectful people are respectful, no matter what their class. From the outside, it is easy for stereotypes to assert themselves. UMCs are snobs, working class people are “honest”. None of them hold much weight in individual interactions.
I must say I am in full agreement with 100% of what you write in the above paragraph, so perhaps we are not as far apart on the central point as we appear to be.
My original point was that I have through experience concluded that UMC’s in England are disproportionately rude. I may miss many of the “social cues” but I do not miss nor do I misinterpret their rudeness. That’s my experience and I own it as such- it is not yours nor have I claimed that it should be. And I can accept that fact without pathologizing you as having some sort of personality disorder.
As regards generalizations, lawyers are, as a group, disproportionately arrogant and rude. Conversely, Engineers tend to be more self-effacing. Americans tend to be very individualistic. These are generalizations. I base these observations on data I have collected and analyzed. Exceptions will always apply, and character must always be allowed to have the final say when evaluating anyone.
If you ever find yourself extremely physically sick and/or on very hard times, you may, like me, find that the working classes are, on balance, more sympathetic to your plight and more loving, caring, and generous toward you than the UMC’s who use big words, speak Italian, and read the Guardian. But I do not wish painful life experiences on you or on anyone.
Finally if you think that being “thick skinned” = mature and/or is one of the most important virtues one can develop with age you have a great deal to learn indeed.
When all is said and done, Peace.
ReverseSnob
Oxonian,
In the interests of integrity I have gone back and re-read my posts on this topic. Yes, the following post that begins as follows was definitely out of line:
A few cultural observations:
1. In American society, this is a normal question that crosses all socioeconomic divides. It is almost always ask with genuine friendliness, and will be followed by other questions about family, hobbies, etc.
2. In Europe, the working classes will never ask this. You will be accepted on your personality.
This was a bit of hyperbole addressed to the Americans and I should have either tempered my language or identified it as exactly that. Your annoyance is justified from that particular post – if I could rewrite it I would replace the hyperbolic language with “usually,” “most often,” etc.
I have met some very nice UMC people in the UK who are not totally up themselves but in truth the ratio seems to run about 20:1.
Deborah
Love this thread! I had unsubscribed to ALL magazines for awhile because I couldn’t keep up and hated the clutter. My last paid subscription was for the WEEK, which is great in its approach of consolidating all the world and national news from various sources in one publication, but I am sensing a theme with the comments here that weekly magazines are just too much to deal with. It was one of those kinds of things where if you don’t read it THAT week it’s useless. Now I just get their bi-weekly emails.
I did get a free subscription to Martha Stewart Living (a “gift with purchase” from Sur La Table), which I used to subscribe to many moons ago but discontinued because the articles started repeating themselves after a year or two. It’s probably been 10 years since I’ve read it though, so I’m enjoying these issues for now.
I too am getting Elle sent to me for some unknown reason. Fun to flip through but I have no qualms about recycling it after a day or 2 if I don’t get to it.
My daughter is getting some cool magazines though – they have so many more for kids now than they did when I was growing up (Highlights anyone?). She gets NatGeo Kids (Loves it), American Girl (spot on for the tween girl set), and ChopChop (a cooking/food magazine especially for kids).
Lisa
I love More.
ReverseSnob
You’re incredibly out of line, UK anon, and disrespectful. You say ReverseSnob is “a bit unstable” but you appear to be suffering from cognitive dissonance yourself, frankly. I don’t know how someone angry about “dismissing an entire group of people,” as you said, can reconcile that with “how terrible Americans generally are at catching the social nuances of other cultures.” Reverse Snob’s response to you was quite spot-on – you do seem overly impressed with your own perceptions.
The comments won’t nest below your comment to me, but I just wanted to say “thank you.” I truly appreciate your support, which took time and effort for you to write when you have nothing to gain from it.
I have been doing a lot of soul searching today asking myself whether the Oxford graduate from the UK was being reasonable (and that I might indeed be in the wrong) when her use of the horrible term “unstable,” along with the contradictions in her post which I too spotted but chose to ignore, were big red flags waving about the nature of her character.
Maya Angelou has a saying: “When people show you who they are, believe them.
You have lifted me up from what has been a trying day (separate and apart from this thread).
With gratitude and Blessings.
BigN1244
I love magazines, I just never have the time to read them all!
Currently (on purpose) subscribe to:
Bon Appetit
Smithsonian
Wine Spectator
Real Simple
Food and Wine
Vanity Fair (Nook)
Well meaning parents got me:
Horse Illustrated (which never ever gets read)
Glamour (I browse casually)
I like Mental Floss, and pick it up occasionally, and used to subscribe to Everyday Food.
I can’t wait to try out some of the websites/apps people have posted here!!
terri
I subscribe to Runners World. Nothing like a little inspiration to keep you running!
Bride
Bob is a beer lover and friend whose beer reviews you can read right here on The Brew Club! His own site is all about ‘Demystifying Britishness’ and is worth checking out!
Nurse
Your mornings will not be a struggle because you will fired up to seize the day. You will also have the energy to get out of bed without hitting the snooze button three or four times.
CheshireLY
I love my Kindle, but not only for its inherent Kindle-ness. The idea of being able to travel without half a suitcase full of books is wonderful. I love e-readers in general, It makes maintaining my list very easy.
These days ,job on website-ads began very slowly. We need learn more from Amazon.com.
Cat
You have to have been living under a rock to have missed hearing about the sexy lingerie.
WangGirlfriend@gmail.com
Some women have never been fitted by a professional.
Samuel
I am always looking online for articles that can facilitate me.
Thx!
Lucy
I used to subscribe to a ton of magazines, but had to pare down when they started to pile up. Now I only get three, but read them cover to cover: Real Simple, Southern Living, and Outside. They round out all my interests.