Interlude: What I'm Reading

Real life and a minor medical issue have disrupted my daily writing habit.  (If you are reading any one thing that I write, such as this blog, my website blog, or even my Facebook or Twitter accounts, you won't believe I write every day, but I do write something somewhere every day, I promise.  Except the last few days.)

As best I've been able, between brain-fogging medications and lots of extra sleep, I have still been doing a lot of reading.  In exploring all the new-to-me magazines I bought, I've come to the following conclusions:

I like the Economist a lot, but there's no way I'd be able to keep up with it every week.  I'm considering picking up a copy once a month or so.  I love the way it not only covers current events in a thoughtful way, but also ties them together and offers a comprehensive global perspective.  I also like that their conclusions tend to follow from facts, rather than from any conspicuous ideology.  I think people who accuse the Economist of leaning right are probably coming to it from something like Time, which very definitely leans left.  That's not a bad thing, but it's important to know if you're going to get your news primarily, or exclusively, from one source.

I thoroughly enjoyed The Atlantic, and I may well end up subscribing to that one.  Nice balance of thought-provoking articles on current events with well-written fiction pieces.  I liked the depth of it, as a nice complement to Time's breadth.

Time is much as I remember it from years ago when I used to subscribe.  A slight left bias, visible but not egregious, and a good, easily digestible overview of what's going on in the world.  I have seen it criticized for being too shallow (mostly by readers of the Economist), but again, if it's not my only source for information, it's great to have something that gives me some top-line context for the deeper content I encounter elsewhere.  I'm thinking about giving The Week a shot as well, to see how it compares.

I decided that the New Yorker would be great if I were, in fact, a New Yorker.  Yes, there's some good stuff in there, but it was literally page 49 where it stopped being a listing of what's on in New York and started being a general interest magazine.  Better than TimeOut, but not suited for those of us who do not live in NY and have no desire to live there, literally or vicariously.

Canada's Motivated magazine is fun -- a business magazine with a distinctly positive and upbeat tone.  It's essentially a day-long conference of motivational speakers in magazine form.  I probably won't subscribe, but I'll look for it on newsstands and pick it up when the cover catches my fancy.

I have a couple more to get through, and will report on those as I finish them.