Surely I'm Not the Only One

Like most people who frequent bookstores, I leave with at least one book. I usually have a magazine, too. I love magazines.

To me, January seems to be magazine season. This month’s issues are optimistic, encouraging, and kind of soothing. The covers seem to have lots of blue shades, ice colors, clean colors that herald beginnings and crisp new starts.

The rah-rah tone, you-can-do-it-slugger attitude, stories about healthy living, ten easy ways you can get organized this year – all predictable but I never get tired of seeing those stories this time of year.

That’s just what I want to read about in January. After a month or two of busy-ness and excess and more, more, more, articles about being kind to yourself, being aware, settling in, cozying up, cocooning, creating, and appreciating the comforts of home – those things strike all that right note with me.

In December, I wouldn’t have appreciated these same articles.

Some of my favorites this month:

Real Simple, which is my new favorite magazine every single month, has all kinds of useful information. The layout and design of its articles is as artful and pretty as Martha Stewart Living but absent the preachy tone, the smug know-it-all looking down their nose. This month Real Simple readers sent in their not to do list for 2009. There was a piece on the best web calculators, 78 chairs for less than $100, imagined to-do lists of legends – Annie Oakley, Fred Astaire, J. K. Rowling, Mozart, and recipes that start with convenience foods.

Oprah’s magazine had an article about change and why it’s hard and what it takes to make it actually happen. It was interesting and suggested that making change has less to do with brute strength and willpower and more to do with asking yourself the right questions about what’s holding you back.

Another article was about the simple living movement. I’m hardly a joiner – I have so much stuff – books and magazines and pictures and you know, stuff, and I like my stuff – something about it held my interest. I like the idea of it and I can see its appeal. I could never sell everything I own and move to an 800 square foot cottage and live off the land. I have no desire to. But still. The thought of scaling back, of making do with less - I can appreciate it, if from afar.

Victoria magazine is all these pictures of lovely, pretty, pretty things. The articles – I’m sure they’re lovely. Except for the essay at the end of the magazine, I’m too busy imagining the world in those lush photographs.

Anyone else share my love of magazines? Which ones?