Take a look on the shelves of a reputable magazine emporium and you’re sure to find something worth reading. Whether you’re into home improvement, singing cowboys, casual racism or spirit photography, there’s something for you. And what could be more pleasant than reading the contents of a magazine, whether on a park bench, in the bath or over the shoulder of the woman in front of you on the Ottawa-Toronto Greyhound bus who deliberately turns the pages over before you’re finished with them?
I happen to be somewhat of an expert in the world of magazines, having received rejection letters from many of them. Here I’ve managed to get my hands on some of the most hotly anticipated issues from the biggest publications in the world. Enjoy my reviews, ye feeble, and rejoice!
This month, Cosmopolitan magazine has a special Dubai Economy issue. I was particularly engrossed by the article on how the country’s switch from a trade-based to a tourism- and service-based economy can help you please your man in the bedroom. It seems that a combination of sexy lingerie and the Palm Jumeirah artificial island are all it takes to drive a man wild.
Being burdened with a y-chromosome, I’m not usually one for reading Cosmo, but I found this issue difficult to put down. The interview with Sandra Oh, in which she talks at length on the proliferation of industry-specific free economic zones in Dubai, is fantastic. Of course, there are articles that would be far more interesting to Cosmo’s regular readers, like the one in which the relationship between Dubai’s free trade in gold and its interest rates are discussed with regard to how fashionable Ugg Boots and black cocktail dresses are.
Also this month, Forbes magazine will have an issue dedicated to Llamas. I will confess, I didn’t enjoy this publication nearly as much as I was expecting. The article by G. Donald Jameson on the effect of South American camelids on international currency markets, for example, contained many errors and omissions. Has Jameson forgotten the Peruvian Alpaca Recession of 1973? From its non-featuring here, one would have to assume so.
Of course, Forbes magazine succeeds most in its lists, and the high point of this otherwise poor publication is the Top 100 Llama Rich List, which does turn up a few surprises. Jonty, Bill Gates’ pet guanaco, has been replaced at the number 1 spot by the four llamas owned by the Sultan of Brunei, Tinky Winky, Laa-Laa, Dipsy and Clive.
National Geographic is pushing the publishing boundaries this month with a special Sex Issue. Whether this attention-grabbing ploy will increase their sales remains to be seen, but on the whole the issue is as interesting as past ones, and rarely descends into gratuity.
The magazine’s writers sent a sex survey to over a thousand different species of insect, and the results are little short of astounding! Who would have thought the beetles do it more often than the fruit flies? Not I. And don’t get me started on the grasshoppers; those guys are naaasty.
With articles on what the ancient Incans can teach us about romance, advice on invertebrate threesomes and some pretty raunchy (but beautiful) photos of monkey coitus, be sure to put National Geographic’s sex issue at the top of your purchasing list, if you have one. If you don’t have one, how do you decide what to buy? Weirdo.
The Imaginary Reviewer accepts no responsibility for paper cuts received as a result of purchases made on his recommendation. For subscription enquiries, bang head against brick wall while robotic voice spouts an infinitude of totally irrelevant options over the phone.
Showing posts with label Publishing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Publishing. Show all posts
Friday, 15 August 2008
Monday, 29 October 2007
Book Review: Great Lists I Have Written by Seldom Hatchery
Great Lists I Have Written by Seldom Hatchery is one man’s love letter to lists, and the writing thereof. In this remarkable memoir, Hatchery, a professor of ergonomics and aesthetics at Coventry University, looks back over more than sixty years of lists that he has written.
The first thing that grabs one while reading this book is that in Prof. Hatchery’s hands, the lists have the ability to move us in many ways. They amuse, sadden, anger and warn us, all at the same time. Take one of Seldom’s earliest lists, written in 1951, entitled ‘Things I will do before I’m forty’:
1 Grow a beard
2 Write a book about ghosts
3 Buy a really nice desk
4 Shoot Mrs. Kilkenny
5 Read War & Peace
We are not informed as to whether Prof. Hatchery carried out the items on this list. However, we are given some poignant insight into the state of mind of a young man full of ambition, full of hope, and possibly full of anger towards a mysterious married woman.
While many of the lists are enjoyable reading in their own right, all are brought to life and given wings by Hatchery’s wonderful prose accompanying them. We learn the context of the lists; we learn of their place in time, we learn of their relevance to their own era.
This contextualisation of the lists is displayed incredibly well in the case of some of Hatchery’s most mundane minutiae. For instance, compare these two shopping lists, the first from 1965 and the second from 1997:
Lard
Dripping
An egg
Corn Flakes
Bin bags
Bread
Oysters
Two large rump steaks
Eggs
Harvey’s Bristol Cream
Tabasco sauce
Corn
Stuff Magazine
Professor Hatchery deconstructs these two lists and uses them as a metaphor for his own life at the time. While once he was a man who purchased lard and dripping, now he was a man with a research grant who could afford corn, oysters and extravagant sauces. But yet throughout, at the middle of each list, persevering through time and holding up the lists like a spine or column are the eggs. The change from one egg to ‘some’ eggs (plural) shows, for Hatchery, a display of growth, of aging. In many ways he is the same, but at the same time, he is ‘more’.
Every list that Professor Hatchery has ever written is here, from the interesting (‘Venice Itinerary, 1972’) to the dull (‘Things I need to do this week, February 10 1980’) and from the exhilarating (‘My favourite break-up records, 1965’) to the embarrassing (‘A list of all my colleagues with attractiveness ratings, 1992’). They constitute a good read on their own, but with the author’s commentary to go with them, this book is an essential read.
‘Great Lists I have Written’ by Seldom Hatchery (pp 930) is published by Elemental Quaker Books and is priced £34.99.
The first thing that grabs one while reading this book is that in Prof. Hatchery’s hands, the lists have the ability to move us in many ways. They amuse, sadden, anger and warn us, all at the same time. Take one of Seldom’s earliest lists, written in 1951, entitled ‘Things I will do before I’m forty’:
1 Grow a beard
2 Write a book about ghosts
3 Buy a really nice desk
4 Shoot Mrs. Kilkenny
5 Read War & Peace
We are not informed as to whether Prof. Hatchery carried out the items on this list. However, we are given some poignant insight into the state of mind of a young man full of ambition, full of hope, and possibly full of anger towards a mysterious married woman.
While many of the lists are enjoyable reading in their own right, all are brought to life and given wings by Hatchery’s wonderful prose accompanying them. We learn the context of the lists; we learn of their place in time, we learn of their relevance to their own era.
This contextualisation of the lists is displayed incredibly well in the case of some of Hatchery’s most mundane minutiae. For instance, compare these two shopping lists, the first from 1965 and the second from 1997:
Lard
Dripping
An egg
Corn Flakes
Bin bags
Bread
Oysters
Two large rump steaks
Eggs
Harvey’s Bristol Cream
Tabasco sauce
Corn
Stuff Magazine
Professor Hatchery deconstructs these two lists and uses them as a metaphor for his own life at the time. While once he was a man who purchased lard and dripping, now he was a man with a research grant who could afford corn, oysters and extravagant sauces. But yet throughout, at the middle of each list, persevering through time and holding up the lists like a spine or column are the eggs. The change from one egg to ‘some’ eggs (plural) shows, for Hatchery, a display of growth, of aging. In many ways he is the same, but at the same time, he is ‘more’.
Every list that Professor Hatchery has ever written is here, from the interesting (‘Venice Itinerary, 1972’) to the dull (‘Things I need to do this week, February 10 1980’) and from the exhilarating (‘My favourite break-up records, 1965’) to the embarrassing (‘A list of all my colleagues with attractiveness ratings, 1992’). They constitute a good read on their own, but with the author’s commentary to go with them, this book is an essential read.
‘Great Lists I have Written’ by Seldom Hatchery (pp 930) is published by Elemental Quaker Books and is priced £34.99.
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