I’m an inveterate magazine buyer. It’s a horrible compulsion, because I used to work for a magazine once upon a time (*cough* college). I know how the articles get recycled — none of the writing is fresh — and that when they say they need to go “on location” what they really mean is they need a hot bikini-clad blonde with a boob job and a cooler of beer on a speed boat at Lake Havasu. But I digress. I have a stack of magazines on my desk and I thought I’d share what I’m reading & why.

Florida Travel & Life: We’re trying to plan a Christmas-time vacation to Key West and this issue has “An Insider’s Guide to Key West”. The tagline for the magazine is “One Great State, One Great Magazine”. I’ve been to Florida a lot. A LOT. I’m fairly sure that the entire state is not that great. Thus I’m not surprised to be unimpressed with the article, which points out all of the tourist traps that my Lonely Planet guide tells me to avoid. $4.99. – Tagline’s a lie.

InStyle: Every month I tell myself that I don’t need this magazine, that I’m not going shopping, that I’m not giving in to the Time-Warner-AOL media complex, that I don’t have to conform to a Hollywood-produced style of conspicuous consumption that none of us can possibly hope to live up to, etc. And then, like magic, every month, I find myself with a copy of the damn thing, hopelessly convinced that I really am going to buy that $350 sweater that looks so great on [insert impossibly thin star of the moment]. This month, Michelle Pfeiffer is on the cover in all of her airbrushed-to-perfection wrinkle-free 48-year-old glory. Number of earmarked pages: 2. $3.99 – Occasionally worth it for the party recipes and the gift ideas.

mental_floss: I had really high hopes for this magazine, but it just seems to be a collection of factoids and trivia bits. Can you really “feel smart again” if your brain is hopelessly cluttered with random bits of arcane knowledge like how the 2nd man to ever survive a ride over Niagara Falls died after getting an infection from a broken leg he got by slipping on an orange peel? $4.99 – A cheap party trick & the blog is better.

Food & Wine: I actually have 2 copies of this magazine on my desk — the May travel issue and the June grilling one. I have this only because my dad gave me a subscription. While I am capable of following instructions and have a nice array of cooking implements, none of them are here in DC and my best impromptu dish is Pop-Tarts. The magazine has been steadily going downhill, or sideways, or something, over the last 3 years that I’ve gotten it. It’s more Hollywood and style and less about food. Everyone is beautiful and everything is expensive. I’m guessing that the demographic skews a little older, maybe to the lawyer/I-banker/consultant/media exec crowd that does a lot of fine wine-buying and gourmet eating out. $4.50 – Occasionally worth it for the “Fast” section of recipes with fewer ingredients and a speedier pace.

Conde Nast Traveler: I am a sucker for travel magazines. I’d buy them all. This one I bought because the cover story is “Best Islands! 60 Easy Escapes” and it’s where I got the idea to go to Key West. The only thing that stops me from picking up everything from National Geographic to Frommer’s Budget Travel is that I don’t need any more enticement to spend my days daydreaming about being on a beach somewhere with a cold drink and a trashy novel. $4.50 – Worth every second of mental drift.
That wraps it up. The Food & Wines and mental_floss I’ll put downstairs for the building freecycle pile. the InStyle I’ll rip out pages of things I’ll never buy and then put it there as well. The Traveler, though, I’ll hang onto for a good daydream about the “7 Lush Caribbean Islands” or “Europe’s Secret Playground”. A girl’s got a dream and definitely not about hanging out on a motorboat with skeevy editors and a half-rack of Coors at the lake…