Magazines

I usually take out a new subscription to Woman and Home or Good Housekeeping when their is a gift I want or a very good deal. I don,t do direct debit as the subscription usually reverts to full price. So I leave it to run out then start again! I use a lot of the recipes and pop them into those cheap plastic sleeves and put them in a ring binder. I do often find the health advice in mags useful too

I bought a lifetime subscription for Saga Magazine for DH's 50th birthday as a joke. That was 23 years ago and it still keeps on coming... I think it must be the best moneys worth ever, in fact I reckon it is now free! It has improved quite considerably over the years having far fewer adverts for stair lifts, false teeth fixers, nursing homes and walk in baths and has more interesting articles on relevant-to-me subjects like travel and money

I share in an app, called Readly, with DD. there is a decent free trial, then a subscription, but you can share it with up to five (I think) other people. There is every sort of magazine, including the real tripe, specialist ones etc. when I think of the price of even the old favourites, it seems a bargain. I sometimes browse through things I'd never buy, and the cookery ones are very useful too.

Hope I'm not advertising - just sharing.

Mslexia - I think it is quarterly - is the only one I've ever subscribed to and I don't even get that now.

On the whole I think magazines, particularly the glossies, are very expensive for what they are - mostly filled with adverts. I'd rather buy a paperback - more expensive but much better value I think.

I do read them at the dentist/doctor/hospital though just to pass the time.

I have The Economist on subscription as a present from my brother and I do love having it but would not buy it for myself as I couldn't afford to.

I have had craft magazines on subscription in the past, sometimes hooked in by the offers, but I have now decided to go month by month through the back copies as little seems to change. The UK craft magazines (I am not into paper crafting, more yarn, thread and fabric hobbies) seem to appeal to the beginner over and over again. There are some US and Australian magazines that I like and that are specific to one area and go much further into the craft they major on and may, one day subscribe.

Absolutely agree about the posters janer!

I did see their point, but I also saw the table completely empty of anything readable and wasn't going to give the receptionists first dibs! You need something to read to take your mind off things when you are at the Dr's. And that doesn't include posters warning you about nasty genital warts etc.

I once went to a Dr's who had a little tv showing a short film about various exciting sexually transmittable infections one could catch, on a loop. It was about ten minutes long and I had to watch the bloody thing three times before I was called in. I would have done anything for a twenty year old Reader's Digest, I can tell you.

janea as long as it wasn't someone with a dicky heart who found and read it, what was the problem?

I remember one of my friends complaining that she couldn't afford to buy Vogue because it was 4 shillings a month! Admittedly this was rather a long time ago

I am a sucker for craft magazines and knitting ones . I donate them to a nursing home when finished with them , also some make their way to the Charity shop where my sister volunteers

Going back to the glossy magazines mentioned, purchased by a work colleague, I was also a bit by the price of them too! I think that if one was to count the pages of content, and compare that to the pages of adverts, it would probably score very low on actual content.

I suppose that I do actually buy one magazine on a regular basis, namely the Radio Times (referred to as the Raddy Otta Mizz) and that has gone up in price, £2 now.

janer You might think the receptionist in the doctor's was being sniffy, but in the early days of my practice, one day I found a magazine on the waiting room table that was of, shall we say, questionable taste and which had been 'donated' by a patient

One thing to beware of with magazine subscriptions is that if you pay for them with a credit card, the subscription continues indefinitely until you cancel it.

A couple of our friends ended up getting birthday presents of two years' subscription instead of one, until I clued on to what was happening.

Now call me cynical, but are we now going to be targetted by adverts from these magazines?

I had a subscription to Trout Fisherman (only because there was a good free gift on offer!). I gave it up after about three years because I noticed that the same articles (with slight variations) kept cropping up each season. There are only so many ways of catching fish! I also buy food magazines, but I wouldn't take out a subscription to them.

Nice one ,*jane*. My dentist has a very upmarket selection but most places I go seem to have only Hello and similar. I take my Kindle everywhere.

A friend of mine was a practice manager in a Dr's surgery, she told me that they disappear until the staff have read them all, which is why there are always a good selection of hunting and fishing and car mags available but nothing much else!

I walked into a surgery once and plonked down a pile of my magazines, and was spotted by a receptionist. She said that in future they must all go through reception, to make sure that the contents were suitable. I showed her the pile of Thomas the Tank Engine and Dandy... She didn't want them after that.

I am now a Guerilla Magazine Placer. The beneficiaries of my generosity are subjected to Woman and Home, DBH's BBC Good Food mags, MiL's Woman's Realm which she passes on but go straight past me without stopping, National Trust and RHS mags and occasionally Good Housekeeping. My sisters try to make me read health-style magazines but like the women's mags beloved by MiL, they pass me by and head straight for the surgery.

Now that DBH is going there regularly, I am a little scared that some will make their way home again.

I have a subscription to Jamie's magazine because it's fun and I buy Woman's Weekly every week. Since I was on one of their focus groups a couple of years ago I feel quite proprietorial about it.

Our surgery banned donations of magazines during the swine flu epidemic and haven't had them back since. I don't think I have bought a women's mag for decades. I sometimes have a look at the Reader's Digest in the dentist's waiting room (they weren't worried about swine flu) but he seldom keeps me waiting long enough. I get magazines from the Scottish National Trust, the U3A, NWR. Nothing too exciting!

I've got a very battered Good Food mag from 1993 that I still get all my Xmas recipes from. Good Food Christmas pud, Good Food Christmas cake and Good Food mincemeat. Mary Cadogan recipes.

Same as Terribull. My mil does pass on womans weekly to me, and that is plenty.

I don't buy magazines but download them free from the Essex libraries website. You need an app and a library card. They have the latest issues of lots of titles!

Further to your post Lilygran, I do agree magazines from way back are probably far more interesting.

I used to buy magazines from time to time, I have to confess I find them a complete waste of money now, I'd rather buy a book. I enjoy leafing through them at the hairdressers where I'm going tomorrow, but when doing so there it reinforces my opinion that they are insubstantial with few interesting articles and loads of advertisements. As for recipes which they can be a good source for, it's easy to access these from websites such as BBC's Good Food.

I never buy magazines the only one I read is Readers Digest which my neighbour puts through the letter box when he is finished with it.
Hate the celeb types and others just repeat what's gone a million times before.

I don't read the women's or needlecraft magazines any more as I think I've reached the stage where I really have read all the features at least twice before and slebs bore me. My DDiL found a copy of a 1950s Woman's Own Yearbook the other day, hardcover, absolutely fascinating! We subscribe to various current affairs magazines and Radio Times. We've stuck with Private Eye, Ana, though I tend to agree with you.