The Magazines I Won't Give Up: My Top Three

Are magazines a dying breed? Certainly the trade pubs are proclaiming their demise. Many are moving to online presence only. But to me, there's something about the tactile quality of holding a magazine in my hands. It's portable for one, I don't have to rely on my laptop's battery reserve, and I can rip out pages to keep. What blog can say that?

Friends, family and colleagues know me as a magazine fiend. I subscribe to about 40 (that's a conservative estimate), and I'm now finding it hard to get through all of them, so I'm slowly letting many subscriptions expire as they come due.

One: The mag is spend the most time with is Vanity Fair. It's perfect plane ride reading material, when I need to block out everything around me, including the snoring man on my left and the salami sandwich eating teen on my right (that was a ORD to LAX ordeal. Thanks American Airlines: knew that Platinum status would come in handy.) Always a compelling mix of politics, current events, investigative reporting and gossip. A first rate editorial staff.

Two: The Week. Not easy to find on newsstands: worth the subscription. A roundup of international opinion on everything. Kind of a Readers' Digest for the uber-literate. A mix of politics, current events, culture, real estate, cooking, and everything under the sun. Takes about one hour to read from cover to cover and worth it.

Three: The New Yorker. Yes, I'm a native New Yorker and proud of it, but I'd subscribe anyway. The New Yorker is not afraid of depth and length. Some of the best books every year have excerpts published here first, from David Sedaris, Malcolm Gladwell, Calvin Trillin, and so many more. The only magazine left that still only publishes illustration on its covers.