magazine love

I love reading - novels, short stories, non-fiction, articles, reviews and blogs. And of course I love to read a good magazine. As far as I can tell, during my twenty-five years of life, there is a lot of quite rubbish magazines out there, garish, cheap and based around celebrities and their weight loss/gain. What a yawn. Aside from my uni days when I do admit 'heat' did provide some non-thinking relief from reading two novels a week AND Middlemarch (damn Middlemarch), I've never really been an avid mag purchaser. But that's enough of that, I'm not here to dwell on the past, I'm going to talk about the present and the magazines I love!

There are two favourites which, come rain or shine (bank balance in the black or red), I seek out, buy and happily devour their contents.

First up, Little White Lies. A bi-monthly film magazine printed on possibly the best paper ever (yes it's important and yes I do take note of such things - it also smells nice too). It is the place to go for all your movie needs. Each issue is loosely based around a specific film or films and not only contains well written reviews of up-coming mainstream and lesser known releases, it also has interviews and articles pertaining to the issue's theme. Oh and as a rule the front cover art-work (and illustrations and typography inside) is awesome.

Secondly, Oh Comely. A beautiful bi-monthly magazine which brings together all sorts of things, also printed on very nice paper. It's mostly about people and their stories told through various formats - interviews, illustrations, creative writing, photographs, objects. There's usually an out of the blue article on something a little random, a recipe or two and a funny little quiz on the last page, reminiscent of those found in teen magazines where you fit into one of four categories depending on your answers. Issue 10's quiz tells you which punctuation mark you are (it's all tongue-in-cheek of course).

A new gem of a magazine I came across this month was Extra Curricular, all the way from New Zealand. It's A5 in size, published three times a year, with an emphasis on the side projects people take on in their spare time. Issue 8 (the most recent one) was particularly interesting as it focuses on self-publishing. I'm looking forward to the next EC already!

I've come across a number of online magazines recently (some good, others not so) and although I know that we're in the digital age and publishing is changing, I personally prefer to carry around and curl up with a lovely printed magazine which I can physically lend to someone should they wish to look at it, rather than peer at something on a screen. Long live print I say! But maybe that's just me...