ReadingAnimals

Time for another installment of Weekly Geeks. This time around, the theme is magazines. My magazine habits have slowed to a near stop - I’ve let one subscription lapse and another has gone out of publication. I’m left with just one active subscription; VegNews. I love the recipes and I know that the reviews and ideas are all things that I can try without having to think or research materials etc. The latest issues has a section on relationships and weddings that was amusing.

As for the recent drop outs, I just let my subscription to New Scientist lapse. I enjoyed it, but there is a subscription at work and I decided I didn’t need a personal copy at home. Animals Voice recently went out of publication, though their web presence is still going strong. This may be a case where small circulation specialty publications are adapting to the changing ways that their audience wants to see information, something many newspapers do poorly. (In the interest of full disclosure, I have written for AV in the past.)

It is very rare that I buy single copies of any magazine at all. In the last year, I can think of one exception: I bought a copy of Seattle magazine that had charts and maps of home values and rental values in our area.

I spoke to my sister about the magazines theme earlier tonight. She subscribes to at least a dozen and buys single copies often. It’s just one of the things she likes to do! I think I buy books and read online (over 100 RSS feeds that I follow, and many more that I dip my toe in once in a while) the way she buys magazines - and her hobby is cheaper and easily recycled. My sister apparently shares this magazine “thing” with some of my fellow Geeks who subscribe to several. While others, like Wendy at Musings of a Bookish Kitty who noticed an ebb and flow in her magazine reading.

The entry at Bibliolatry included several magazines/journals that i had never heard of before. One that really piqued my interest were The Sun. Maybe next time I’m tempted by a $75 new release, I can check out a single issue instead. Seems like a reasonable solution - save money and get a reading fix!

Looking over the other great entries, I noticed that Bookmarks (totally makes sense) and Entertainment Weekly (an interesting surprise) were on multiple lists!