The Reds On Magazines

 RHYS BOWEN: At the beginning of the new year my daughter-in-law suggested we make vision boards. I’ve done this before with her and find them very revealing. This one I made once and keep in my office to look at when I work.

The problem is that to make a good vision board you need a selection of magazines and we don’t get any magazines any more, except for Consumer Reports. And I can hardly make a vision board out of washing machines and mattresses.

I suppose one of the reasons we stopped taking magazines is that we live in two places so the magazines just pile up in California when we are in Arizona. But also it’s so much easier to look at magazines online.  I don’t even do that much any more. Magazines seem to be a thing of my past, which is a shame, as I really used to enjoy them.

When I was growing up there were several magazines for children. I got GIRL magazine and another one I can’t remember the name of. They had stories in them about adventurous girls, Patsy of the Circus who was a trapeze star, was my favorite. I played at being Patsy and made my own trapeze, doing stupidly brave things on it.

My brother had Eagle, and Boy’s Own. They had stories like Dan Dare, Pilot of the Future.

Every woman in England got Woman and Woman’s Own, and Woman’s Weekly with their recipes and knitting patterns and romance stories.

When I married and lived in California I took Redbook and Good Housekeeping. We also had National Geographic and Time and Life, oh and Reader’s Digest. I suppose now that things like Facebook make up for them… snippets of information and entertainment. But they don’t really. I miss them.   When I’m in England I browse through English women’s magazines but they are different now. Much more celebrity oriented, certainly no knitting patterns.

So, dear Reds, do you still take magazines? Do you miss them?

JENN McKINLAY: I love magazines. Probably, because I spent my teen years in my room reading Seventeen, Teen, Tiger Beat, etc. As a mom, I got all the parenting magazines - my fave was Family Fun - so many great activities. Now I get Prevention, which I got hooked on when I was a librarian for the Scottsdale Hospital and Atomic Ranch because we live in a mid-century ranch and that magazine has gorgeous houses that our humble abode aspires to be.  

LUCY BURDETTE: I love magazines too, though like Rhys I stopped ordering them because of my two addresses–impossible to keep up with the mail. My first love was Tiger Beat–I had to work to persuade my parents this would be ok to read. I remember getting MS magazine, maybe Cosmopolitan, Redbook, and Ladies Home Journal which had the column “Can this marriage be saved?” My favorite read! I also took Bon Appetit for a long time, and Cooking Light. Our Key West librarian reported recently that the most popular e-read these days is The New Yorker. I’m going to try that this year!

HALLIE EPHRON: Gosh, I haven’t gotten magazines in years. I miss The New Yorker, New York Magazine, Boston Magazine… but the truth is they just piled up unread. I am SO tempted by the Atlantic Monthly because of their stellar recent reporting, but I’d be signing up for their e-zine, nothing I could cut up for a vision board. 

On the newspaper front, I do get the Boston Globe delivered, and try not to think about how much it’s costing me. It’s just one of those luxuries I’ve agreed to give myself.

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN:  Oh, I love magazines! I used to get [MORE] and a very cool women' s magazine the name of which I can never remember but it was not Ms. Does anyone remember?  I grew up reading Vogue with my mother, we loved it,  and it was where mom taught me the difference between clothes people wore in magazines and what people wore in real life.  Now I get The New Yorker, cannot live without it, and New York, and Vanity Fair, and The Atlantic for solidarity. They all come in digital and paper, and I read bits of both depending on what's convenient.

(I have never made a vision board, though…)

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: Hank, I had a subscription to [MORE] as well, and I wish there was something like it still out there. Like most politically aware adults in the pre-internet age, Ross and I got TIME and Newsweek, and for a while, he subscribed to Foreign Affairs (pricy!) Of course, we subscribed to Sports Illustrated, and had National Geographic because according to Ross, our kids would grow up illiterate without it. (He was VERY keen on geography!)

I still get HGTV Magazine and House Beautiful in the mail - to me there’s a noticeable different in photos in full-sized print as opposed to on a screen. For text-based periodicals, I have digital-only subscriptions; The Atlantic, New York Magazine and The New Yorker. One advantage of those as opposed to the print editions: you can share articles without clipping them out and mailing them!

DEBORAH CROMBIE: I do still get magazines. Bon Appetit, although I use my digital subscription more than the actual magazines. D Magazine, which my daughter sends me–great for local stuff. We also get print copies of The Economist and The Atlantic. My subscription to The New Yorker, alas, is just digital. We used to take Rolling Stone but finally cancelled it as it had become so expensive.

But my passion is print copies of the magazines that require a trip to my local B&N; the UK edition of Country Living (so good, nothing like the US version,) The English Home, UK House and Garden, UK Homes and Gardens. I don't manage to get them all every month (ouch!) but it's such fun when I can snag an issue or two.

A fun note–I was a dedicated Gourmet subscriber for many years and was heartbroken when it folded. But, now, apparently, Conde Nast has let the copyright expire and some new food writers have taken it over and are publishing a monthly digital edition, for people who really like to cook (rather than get dinner on the table in thirty minutes.) Sounds fun but they don't give you a free issue and I'm not sure I'm interested enough to pay $7 a month.

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RHYS BOWEN:  It was only as I put this up to be published that I remembered what today is. How dismayed he would be to see what was happening now. But remember what he said: THE ARC OF THE UNIVERSE IS LONG, BUT IT BENDS TOWARD JUSTICE.  We'll keep hoping.