Bloodless Coup

I used to read the New York Review of Books. I guess that was back when I was in grad school. Quite liked it actually. They had some really nice pieces.

But you're much more the magazine guy than I am. I'm down to only subscribing to The New Yorker.

Y'know, ten-twelve years ago, I subscribed to probably 15 magazines and three newspapers. Nowadays... well, here's the complete list:

Barron's (which I almost never read, but am professionally obliged to get)
Smart Money (ditto)
Cook's Illustrated

That's it. No car-porn, no Economist, no Atlantic Monthly, nada. Times change.

Well, I guess I'm on my own. I may still add a new one, and I've been getting C&D for almost 30 years now (hard to stop). Cook's Illustrated I just signed back up for (they annoy me as much as I like them).

I really wish I could find a decent music magazine or two.

I really like Cook's. I think it's a good choice to pick that back up. The problem with music mags is that most of them are more culture mags than music mags anymore. Your tastes are so wide ranging (metal, indie, pop, rock, americana) that no one mag will meet your needs every month. That's what has good about CMJ in its heydey, in that it covered a lot of ground. Have you looked into Paste? Also, I would call the Atlantic and get them to stop sending the schlock. Brittney Spears on the cover? Oh please. I don't think you give Vanity Fair enough of a chance. They have a lot of good investigative articles on politics and such... Sebastian Junger etc (the kind of thing I used to expect from the Atlantic).

CI annoys me too -- salt does NOT improve everything, their Asian (East and South) recipes can be charitably described as "inept", etc., etc.

I do read a variety of mag articles (Atlantic, TNR, car stuff, etc) online, but most of my dead tree magazine reading dropped away several years ago.

I guess as a non-cooking person, I care less about the recipes (and the salt thing you describe) and like cooks more for the Hints from Heloise aspect. What is this gadget and how do you use it and do you really need it. And I'm a sucker for the back page illustrations. Like, how can you resist a whole page of multicolored, lovingly rendered beets?

I can't, that's why I subscribe. :-) And a lot of their recipes are really excellent, especially for those who want real food but are time-crunched.

cook's illustrated, eh? might have to look into that one.

i'm strictly an atlantic guy these days, and while i recognize some legitimate complaints, i'm going (evidently) to go out on a limb in present company and say i still think its main stories are engaging and well done. i especially like fallows on asia, and i think atlantic has done a pretty solid job on iraq with a bunch of candid, nuanced longer pieces.

as for NYRB, i've considered subscribing from time to time, especially when i was in law school, when i found that my research into ronald dworkin sent me there a number of times, where he's published with some frequency. certainly, the material there seemed to me current and sophisticated, and aimed at a fairly well-educated reader.

regarding non-fiction reviews, i'm not sure i get the broadside on the Times -- they review plenty of non-fiction in the book review, if not during the week.

You're not the only one thinking about magazines.

Moon - I'm glad you can stand the Atlantic. Somebody needs to keep them in business. Once their editor died in Iraq, the tone of the magazine changed. They seem much more "pop culture" and less interested in exploring/informing about the world. And they have decidedly ceased non-fiction reviews in any significant way (oh, and they continue to give Hitchens a venue; he remains an idiot).

The NYT has also, in my opinion, significantly downplayed non-fiction reviews. I have no evidence for this, other than my anecdotal take on looking them over week after week. They just don't seem to cover as many, or as interesting, as the Economist does. I may try the NYRB.

Yeah, I'm with Baltar on the quality of The Atlantic collapsing in recent years. I like Fallows a lot, the numbers pages, and the brief book reviews they still manage to include are good. But they employ Wittes and Hitchens which turns me off them big-time. And worst of all they prominently feature Caitlin Flanagan's work all the time. And Flanagan is just full-on horrible. There aren't words in the English language to describe how self-involved, controling and full-on frightening she is. She deserves to be in some seldom-read corner of The Corner. Not in The Atlantic. And until they ditch her, I'm not subscribing again.

As a writer, I love Hitchens -- his writing is glorious, even when his point is asinine.

Re The Economist, I'm with Megan McArdle:

There's something really sad about someone complaining that a magazine is terrible because it makes stupid people feel smart. Sad in part because working for The Economist is a good way to find out just how many actually brilliant and accomplished people read the magazine, and gush about it when they meet you. But also sad because it sounds like that third grade loser trying to get the cool kids back by saying "You don't even know short division!"People who are actually confident in themselves do not, in my experience, complain about dangerous reading materials giving the proles ideas above their station. Terrible, horrible, classically liberal ideas. Bad proles!

Read, as that dorky law professor says, the whole thing.

Uh, I don't know - sharply written shit might be sharply written - but it's still shit.

But I don't really want to get into a philosophical debate on the value of aesthetics.