Many Suffer Problematic Periodical Predicaments
When a stack of BestLife magazines, in a hand-me-down delivery from a relative, landed with a multi-volumed thud on my dining room table recently, my first reaction was, “Great, more media to consume.”
The mag — a mix of GQ-esque style stuff and Men’s Health advice, but with a mature, paternal tone — arrived alongside unread copies of Forbes, Entrepreneur and Maxim (all publications that I’ve never cracked).
But as I flipped through BestLIfe’s pages, which featured a dapper Ewan McGregor on the cover, I gained respect for its reasonable and adult addition to the men’s magazine world.
Men’s magazines often feature six-figure sports cars driven by perfectly unshaven studs with 6 foot Brazilian models in their laps.
So, BestLife’s use of parental and marriage advice pages, without stooping to jokes about losing freedom to domestic life or how to stay indie-hip with a baby, is a welcome addition to the genre.
Best of all, they have the random piece of fiction — the October issue featured a story by T.C. Boyle.
In keeping with the m.o. of this blog, I feel that it’s necessary to include some reuse ideas pertaining to magazines.
A great way to save the good parts of magazines before they head off to the recycling bin is to cut out your favorite articles – for me it’s often the fiction and photo essays from the New Yorker - and paste them into older, random books — themselves saved from the landfill.
My wife and I use this cut and paste method not only to save design ideas for later use on our home and at work, but also to create memory books that serve to de-clutter our lives.
In the end, it’s best to reuse as much of the paper waste whenever possible.
Here are two links for media reuse ideas (they’re a little more creative and crafty than those listed above): Hyyge House and Craftster.
Bob Carper over at the Angsulong blog asks, “Do you really need the newspaper if you don’t read it as soon as it comes in?”
He suggests canceling all unnecessary magazines subscriptions in his list of ways to improve at-home recycling.
Recently, my subscription to the New Yorker ran out and I decided not to renew it – somewhat due to economic reasons, but mainly because of the amazing internet and the existence of super blogs like Antidisingenuousmentarianism.
This local (Athens) blog – in extended edition title format – loves giving the highlights on each week’s New Yorker, as well as a lot of other well written posts. A gatekeeper like that makes it easy to pick and choose the good reads online.
A slightly off subject venture into sarcasm land: an issue of Country Home snuck into the stack of man magazines that weekend and guess who was inside the cozy, quilty pages – Danny Seo, America’s green design guru.
Seo offers such amazing green ideas as: “For just $100 more, you can request the eco-friendly version of this classic wingback sofa ($2,350).”
Or you could just not buy the sofa and make do and update the one you already have.
It’s so easy being green, especially when you don’t have to stop consuming.
The top photo comes from the kind project blog that has a great post about magazines.
Here’s more T.C. Boyle links: one and two.
His last two New Yorker stories were wonderful.
