must-have magazines

Betty and Veronica Double Digest

 

Forgot to add that Sedaris wrote a humorous little ditty "House Husbandry" in the new New Yorker anniversary double issue. Worth the read.

 

At Borders today, eating one of those fantastic white chocolate chip cookies, heated up, with a big scoop of vanilla ice cream on top, reading The Nation, and enjoyed 2 well-written articles, the first one about Black History Month in relation to White History, the other a thought-provoking opine about Barack Obama in relation to the guy (geez, I can't remember the prez candidate's name) who made the remark about how literate Obama is then backtracked because the comment came across un-PC.

And in The Atlantic, there was a funny correspondence letter from Ireland's prime minster, or some higher up, from the days leading up to JFK's 1963 visit, saying that a group would throw a large sack of flour on "Your Excellency" unless he sent letters to all the major U.S. newspapers apologizing for disparaging remarks about Ireland and its citizenry.

 

SLAM

 

Probably the best there is

 

I second the New Yorker (or possibly third, as I'm still on the first page of the thread). I've never read better stuff. I hear good things about Esquire. I don't know about Vanity Fair, but it has some decent writing at times. My friends likes Harpers, and I've liked the few issues that I've perused. I think the key is to get good variety. Also, I wouldn't recommend any of the big news weeklies. They tend to suck balls. I had a trial subscription to Time back in the day, and it seemed like every other issue was focused on religion. I hear people say it's a liberal publication, but I think it's the exact opposite. I got to the point where I couldn't read the fucking thing.

Funny thing, I haven't read SI in years. Is it as good as it was in the '80s? I loved it back then. The last time I read was shortly after Pearlman pissed off David Wells. I read his next baseball story. It was terrible, in my view. I think it was about Derek Bell. I hated it, so I never read again. I do recall skimming the Rushin and Reilly columns when there was a copy to be snagged at a doctor's office, etc. I enjoyed those, as well as some of the departments.

 

Really good article on Dice-K in the SI baseball preview edition.

 

Lewis Lapham wrote a fantastic Notebook piece in this month's Harper's.

 

I got Money for four years. It got way, waaay too preachy and pedestrian in its writing. Plus, they'd always profile all these people who had $100k IRAs in their late 20s/early 30s with no debt or could afford to put away $5k a month as if everyone can do that.

When I subscribed in the middle 90s, I was making $28.5k a year and considering myself fortunate to be able to put away $125 a month. Aside from the fact my dad educated me about the stock market (it put me through college), I didn't need to be talked down to like an 8-year-old that I needed to put away more money. And that's what Money did, touting the exception as the rule.

Instead, the personal finance magazine to get is Smart Money. It's put out by the Wall Street Journal. The articles are better written and the information is far more practical and pragmatic than what you see in Money.

 

[blue] Do they still publish, "High Times?" [/blue]

 

I get:

Esquire (always look forward to it every month ... lots of good reading)

The Economist (I'm back in school as an Econ major and this is in many ways like an international version of Time or Newsweek ... lots of good stories (including plenty of stuff on the US), not just about economics, and it's a weekly).

Macworld (because I've become a Mac geek in the last year).

I used to get the New Yorker and may start it up again. I always enjoyed reading it, but it's expensive, especially with the Economist already commanding nearly a $100 a year even with a student discount).

 

Al Bundy's favorite: Big 'uns!