Magazines and other periodicals

[Claire]

What are your favorites, and why? I used to love magazines when I was younger, then gave up on them when one (during the first gulf wars) (I think it was glamour)) gave advice on how women could get out of their military commitments should they have to go to war. Huh? What, the US military is a social welfare program?

So cancelled that.

Then, as I've been aging (I'm 57, and you might have guessed, a vet),I'm looking for magazines that I might be interested in. NOT right- or left- winged political dog doo.

So over the past few years, I've picked up a mag here and there, geared to older women.

What have I found? All the fashion models who made me feel inferior in my teens and twenties, now telling me how to be thin and gorgeous like them. Huh? That's it?

Does anyone know of magazines that have a literary bent? Short stories and such? I feel like it has to be out there somewhere.

I've taken USN&WR, and various other news mags, but am thinking in terms of more literary stuff.

Any ideas?

 

[PrincessFiona60]

I just read cooking magazines, Diabetes Forecast and AARP news. Oh and a huge stack of catalogs...

 

[CWS4322]

I love the LCBO Food and Drink magazine. It is available on-line. I also snag all my mom's Better Homes and Garden mags when I'm there. I scan the recipes and decorating ideas and then donate the magazines to a shelter.

 

[Kylie1969]

I love Better Homes and Garden mags, also all the Home ones, like Country Garden and House

 

[jabbur]

I love Guideposts and Angels on Earth (stories of faith). I also get Reminisce and Reminisce Extra (folks sharing their memories of childhood and "the olden days"). Those I read faithfully. I stopped getting Reader's Digest recently. They changed it alot. It's gotten more like a health magazine with a few stories than a story magazine with a few health tips. Off and on I'll subscribe to World of Puzzles for a year.

 

[Gravy Queen]

I subscribe to BBC Good Food magazine and I like Jamie Olivers magazine. Basically I love food mags.

However with my shallow thirst for gossip I regularly buy the likes of Ok, Hello and Heat just to keep up with who's had botox/lost weight/gained weight/got married/divorced/had a baby. All vital things I need to know in my little world.

I used to love Martha Stewarts Living magazine but for some reason can't get it in Costco any more and nowhere else stocks it. So to remedy this I will probs get an Ipad this week and I can get a Martha app. I love Martha, she is in complete la la land at times. I love that Martha world.

 

[Andy M.]

I no longer read magazines. The food mags I used to get were mostly ads with a couple of recipes then more ads.

The same is true of other mags too. It's interesting to pick up an international airport issue of Time magazine and see how thin it is without ads.

 

[Katie H]

When I was writing full time I subscribed to at least 13 magazines, mostly food-related, along with a bunch of online reading sites. When I retired I dropped everything then, as time progressed, I eased back into subscribing to one magazine, Southern Living.

I'd subscribed to it when I was writing and really enjoyed it. I never tried a recipe that wasn't stellar, there was plenty of gardening information (something I love), travel discussions and a section on great books to read, of which I've taken their advice and discovered several wonderful reads.

I've been given a number of, in order, copies of Good Housekeeping and can't seem to warm up to it. Too much advertising and the general content just doesn't seem geared to my lifestyle or thinking.

When it first came out, I took Taste of Home and really enjoyed it. I saw a copy of it at the bookstore the other day and hardly recognized it. It's changed a lot.

Most of the magazines that I see on the racks now are filled with either politics (it's an election year), pop culture crap or mega-health trend magic that I'm turned off.

No matter what magazine I have/get, I "peel" it before I even read the first word. By that I mean I remove ALL the pages that have advertising on both sides and shake out all those annoying reply cards that are tucked in or stuck in. Then, and only then, will I read word one of the publication.

I figured the percentage of the magazine taken up by this mess was almost 30% of a magazine I picked up not long ago. That bothers me and really gets my goat when I see the newsstand price printed on them. Ugh!

Okay, I'll get off my soapbox now.

In answer to your question, Claire, you might find some value in Southern Living. Check it out the next time you are out.

And, I never pay full subscription price. The publishers are always offering some sort of deal. I think my current annual fee for my Southern Living is $16.

 

[Merlot]

I love cooking magazines, almost all of them but I dont subscribe to anything. It feels like stopping a magazine contract is next to impossible at times.

I love Southern Living and Better Homes and Gardens, Food and Wine, Bon Appetit.

 

[PrincessFiona60]

I forgot to mention my Nursing Magazines and periodicals. I get them delivered at work.

 

[MrsLMB]

Food Network Magazine is what I have a subscription to. I also pick up regional specific magazines when I see them. Sometimes I find new things to do in our area. I also enjoy craft magazines from time to time. I gave up on all those with those skinny people plastered all over everywhere .. never found anything of value.

 

[Claire]

I definitely "peel" my magazines. At one point I had over a decade of Gourmets, but had stopped my subscription even before they went out of business, there was less and less I enjoyed. I gave the entire bookcase full of them to a friend after copying the recipes I actually used. I now get Saveur and enjoy some of the articles. I guess I show my age when I say I probably enjoy AARP magazine! I'm going to have to go 'net surfing, I think. I'd like something that features short stories by up-and-coming authors.

 

[jabbur]

You might like the Smithsonian magazine. It has really good articles. DH brought one home that was left in his hotel room. Has a great article on the Titanic.

 

[PrincessFiona60]

I definitely "peel" my magazines. At one point I had over a decade of Gourmets, but had stopped my subscription even before they went out of business, there was less and less I enjoyed. I gave the entire bookcase full of them to a friend after copying the recipes I actually used. I now get Saveur and enjoy some of the articles. I guess I show my age when I say I probably enjoy AARP magazine! I'm going to have to go 'net surfing, I think. I'd like something that features short stories by up-and-coming authors.

I'm in one of my reading funks, which seem to be happening more frequently, in which I just cannot sit and read. When I do read, I'm reading action thrillers.

 

[Margi Cintrano]

Publishing Magazines & Online Magazines

Interesting Post ... Very valuable and informative ...

Published Magazine Subscriptions:

1. Bon Appetit
2. Gourmet Club ( oldest food magazine in Spain - 1936 in Spanish only )
3. House and Garden - British Edition
4. Spanish Only: Habitat
5. Wine Spectator

Reading Online:

1. Sunset
2. Southern Living
3. Coastal Living
4. Food and Wine
5. Saveur
6. HOLA - Like Gravy Queen, I enjoy knowing who is getting hitched, who is getting divorced, who has a new film, a new gig, who is pregnant and who is with who ! The recipes in HOLA, the Spanish HELLO, are wonderful.

Foreign Languages:

1. Sobremesa - Spanish
2. Daily Spanish Newspaper
3. Weekend Edition - Italian Newspaper
4. Mexican Sabores - Spanish language

Have great summer.
Ciao. Margaux.

 

[roadfix]

Running a small business with a reception area we get lots of free subscriptions from publishers. We usually get a general variety of magazines and for the most part we have no control over selection.

 

[bakechef]

I only have a couple of subscriptions, they are both digital, Food Network Magazine and a Martha Stewart cooking mag. The reason I have those is that they are really inexpensive digitally. FN is like $2 an issue, and the Martha is $1

 

[Greg Who Cooks]

The golden age of magazines has passed. The costs of printing, of paper and of postage combined with competition from the Internet (faster, cheaper) ruined magazines.

Back in the era of magazines I enjoyed Analog (sci-fi mag), F&SF (fantasy/sci-fi mag), Scientific American (obviously science) and Sunset Magazine (cooking, lifestyle).

My SF pulps died when all pulp fiction died (a victim of TV). I quit subscribing to Scientific American 1-2 decades ago, when expenses caused them to thin their magazine so much it was not enough meat for the price.

I don't know what happened with Sunset Magazine and me. AFAIK they were primarily about the West Coast (US) lifestyle and cooking. Their publisher Lane Publishing is here in California (SF or nearby? IIRC Menlo or something like that) so it's understandable that they focused on the California lifestyle. For all of my young adult life they were one of my primary sources of cooking recipes, along with Joy of Cooking the seminal cookbooks of the 1930s and one of the basic sources of cooking and recipes in America until the advent of the Internet.

I still have about a dozen Lane Publishing cookbooks ranging all the way from barbecue to Chinese to Italian cuisine. They are all still very valuable to me as source cookbooks. The very first recipe I ever cooked (when I was a teenager) came from Sunset Favorite Recipes cookbook, a full sized beef pie I cooked for my family. The recipe I cooked is featured on the cover, and that was my moment when I knew I wanted to become a serious amateur chef.

I still read an occasional issue of Sunset and more rarely a Scientific American issue. I miss SA because it was my monthly science fix. I miss Sunset because for so long it was one of my biggest monthly recipe thrills. I miss the pulps but TV killed them, and the Internet killed the rest.

My best cooking ideas today come from PBS cooking shows and the series cookbooks, and from my own life eating in restaurants and liking foods and then using the Internet to compose my own recipes to cook those same foods.

 

[buckytom]

i read: bassmaster, north american fishing club, boy's life, and broadcast engineering.

i agree with greg tbat print media is (or should and will soon be) a thing of the past. i know lots of people like the visceral sense of reading from printed copy, but killing a tree, using toxic processes to make paper and photo emulsions, and the fuel used to deliver the periodicals seems wrong in an environmental sense.

another generation or two should kill it off.

 

[PrincessFiona60]

Then what will I use for an ottoman?