I love magazines!

Let's do another magazine roundup! Do you love magazines? I looooove magazines. It makes sense, because I grew up in a household with about a million magazine subscriptions, from Aramco World to Ebony to Organic Gardening, and always always the New Yorker. Reading magazines helps me feel smart and in touch, but the articles are in nice digestible chunks and not IMPOSSIBLY LONG like a BOOK. (I don't have the attention span for books right now. I know it's sad.) Also they are shiny and nice to look at. Win! (Here's a link to my 2007 roundup.)

I am pleased to report that I have finally managed to stop subscribing to Vanity Fair, and my life is better because of it. That magazine just makes me feel bad about myself: for reading it, for hating it while I'm reading it, and for not being one of the gorgeous/dynamic/psychotic/dumb famous people that it slavers over.

Spider & Ranger Rick: These are my daughter's magazines but we read them to her, so they're kind of ours, too. Spider is the younger version of Cricket, and I think it's excellent. Ranger Rick has been around since I was a kid, we like it very much.

Paleo Magazine: Yes, there is such a thing! I'm a little paleo-conflicted right now, but I like to see what the movement thinks it's up to. This is a very thick glossy magazine for what I presume is a limited readership.

Bon Appetit & Cook's Illustrated: These are gifts from some of my best girlfriends (LOVE YOU ladies!) and they're great. Bon Appetit is inspiring and fun; I usually try at least one recipe each month. Cook's Illustrated is more educational. I treat each issue as an addition to my collected encyclopedia of the right way to cook.

Runner's World & Women's Running: I wish there were more running magazines I could get! These two are the friendly ambassador magazines of running and I eat them up.

Outside: I discovered Outside when I was 13 and spending some time on a ranch with a family friend in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. She had to work during the day, so I lived an outdoor-girl's dream of riding horses bareback, running through meadows and marshes with the farm's super-friendly Alsatian, and reading everything I could find in the apartment, including books about fly fishing and Outside magazine. I requested a subscription after that, and kept it for years. Recently I started subscribing again (after a disappointing false start a few years ago when it seemed that every issue was just a fancy gear catalog). It's as great as ever now.

National Geographic: How can you go wrong with this classic? The photographs are AMAZING, and there's always something new to learn. Said the geographer's daughter.

New York & The New Yorker: I've always adored The New Yorker, but I think it's also a great idea to take New York. (Do you like how I used the old-school word for subscribe there, "take" ?) It's interesting when both magazines cover the same thing--then you know that thing has gotta be important. NYC fascinates us, though we never ever go there. I think these are essential weeklies for keeping up with the times, whatever that means.

Next I would like to subscribe to meatpaper, a beautiful art-meat magazine I discovered in Santa Fe. (I still need to figure out how to work the paypal before I can get my subscription. I think talking about meat is very important, whether you eat it or not. Way more important than the whitey Young Hollywood issue of Vanity Fair, ha!)