Just who reads these things anyway?

Ever stood in a newsagency and looked at all the magazines?  I mean, really looked?  There are magazines for everything, and everyone.  Of course there's the general categories:  the gossip mags (Braneglina are together! No, apart! No, together, with a new baby!  No, apart but with two new babies!), women's interest (how to be thin, how to be happy with your body shape, how to be thin and happy with your body shape, how to get/keep/lose a man), men's interest (breasts, apparently) and the more specialised categories - knitting, cars, scrapbooking, boats, fashion, computers, kids, cooking, gardening and so on.

Even within these categories there is an astonishing range and variety.  And then outside of these categories - the weird, the wonderful, the truly niche magazines.

As you may have gathered, I have stood in a newsagency and looked at the magazines.  In fact, I spend quite a bit of time in my local newsagency.  Why?  Because I like magazines.  I always have done.  When I was at high school, I had the best collection of teen magazines around - all kept of course, and filed under date so I'd always know what the summer beauty special of 1997 recommended for perfect beach hair.  As an adult my Gourmet Traveller collection is a thing of beauty, and while I've graduated from the teen bibles, I am on a very familiar acquaintance with several of the mainstream women's and gossip titles.

I also subscribe to, and buy knitting magazines.  Many knitting magazines.  I view them as an investment (my husband may disagree) and I fall upon each new copy with glee, eager to get lost in the patterns, new techniques, history of knitting and new ideas.  For me, the magazines are valuable.  But it occurred to me the other day as I prevaricated between The Knitter and Filati Handknitting (VK and Interweave Knits are on the subscription list), that for someone who wasn't a knitter, my interest in reading very specific information about a very specific subject on a monthly basis may be slightly odd.  As odd as I find the regular reading of magazines about scale model gliders, perhaps.

Now, clearly my magazine habits aren't odd, or obsessive  (go with me here).  Instead, I realised, perhaps I had to rethink my unconscious bias to all those other tomes of information out there.  No longer could I sidle past Chicken Farmer Monthly with a smirk, or raise my eyebrows at Bored Housewives - Unbared!*.    It was time for me to expand my horizons!  To welcome these other magazines into my life and see what I could learn!

Over the next 52 weeks, I will be featuring a new magazine weekly.  I'll explore across the genres, reading my way through every interest, share my finds with you, and hopefully learn something along the way.  So the answer to my initial question - just who reads these things, anyway? - is, I guess me.  I do.  One a week, for a year.

*Ok, I made these titles up. But just wait till you see the titles I don't make up!