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Reading Materials & Subscriptions

Good afternoon everybody!

Just a quick question, I have been thinking recently about my future endeavors with my writing, and a question just popped into my head that i thought i could ask on here.
Apart from the obvious writing magazine subscription, does any subscribe to any other magazine or news sources such as newspapers? I have a soft spot for the good old politics etc and i'm considering subscribing to a newspaper as well and i have my preferences but wondering if it has any benefit to your writing in general with more reading material against costs?

Comments

  • The Week is a good magazine. It depends what you write about.
  • i want to write a political thriller.
  • The Week would keep you on top of international affairs. 
  • My husband reads The Economist and the FT which covers a lot of political and economic news in some depth. Also Motorsport which I suppose might help if you needed a getaway car! 
    I used to subscribe to some of the monthly fiction specials I wrote for but as that market has been cut so much its down to one now.
  • I have The Author (magazine of the Society of Authors) with lots of pertinent info, Carousel and Caterpillar which are children's poetry and fiction magazines, the nawe magazine (National Association of Writers in Education) and the Diabetes UK magazine. no newspapers but if I did it would the summing up one I can't recall the name of 'i'?
  • Not sure if the content of some of those would help, Liz. As thrilling as The Author is, I can't see it being used in a political thriller. Unless there's a clue in the membership names? A codeword? Oh, what a thought!
  • Ah, but there is news in all of them. In anything you read. I get thoroughly fed up with crime stories and adventure stories that completely get diabetes wrong. Usually administering cake or sugar to someone who has 'forgotten to take their insulin', or bringing insulin to someone who collapses, who then takes said insulin. Unless the diabetic does not know they are diabetic, a collapse will always be due to too much insulin and require glucose or something sweet. If you've forgotten to take your insulin, inulin is what is required. If you collapse you have to much insulin and must have glucose urgently. And you'll be confused so might accept the insulin and take it. I don't think any reading anywhere can be a waste of time, but my point is - it's not just newspapers that contain news and quite often the news in newspapers is no 'news' but propaganda. You'd have to get to the facts and the facts are usually available but not really in newspapers, as far as I have come to see. for instance a news story about a new medical discovery quite often misses the entire point of the discovery, or gives very misleading info as to its benefits or future use... but you can find that out by looking at the relevant study, often by just reading the summing up. Libraries are a good source of newspapers and journals on any subject where you could look further into any story that was in a newspaper. 
  • Liz said:
    Ah, but there is news in all of them. In anything you read. I get thoroughly fed up with crime stories and adventure stories that completely get diabetes wrong. Usually administering cake or sugar to someone who has 'forgotten to take their insulin', or bringing insulin to someone who collapses, who then takes said insulin. Unless the diabetic does not know they are diabetic, a collapse will always be due to too much insulin and require glucose or something sweet. If you've forgotten to take your insulin, inulin is what is required. If you collapse you have to much insulin and must have glucose urgently. And you'll be confused so might accept the insulin and take it. I don't think any reading anywhere can be a waste of time, but my point is - it's not just newspapers that contain news and quite often the news in newspapers is no 'news' but propaganda. You'd have to get to the facts and the facts are usually available but not really in newspapers, as far as I have come to see. for instance a news story about a new medical discovery quite often misses the entire point of the discovery, or gives very misleading info as to its benefits or future use... but you can find that out by looking at the relevant study, often by just reading the summing up. Libraries are a good source of newspapers and journals on any subject where you could look further into any story that was in a newspaper. 
    I'm not going to lie i skim read this post at first and thought where on earth does diabetics come into it then i re-read haha! 
  • Diabetes is frequently used as a plot point, Skribe, have seen it over and over on political thrillers and all thrillers! Plot points should be very well researched, methinks, even little details. Because as soon as I read something that i know is incorrect, then I leap out of the story into indignation! And so with everything. Because a book is most often not really about politics but a story which is set within politics. 
  • Liz said:
    Diabetes is frequently used as a plot point, Skribe, have seen it over and over on political thrillers and all thrillers! Plot points should be very well researched, methinks, even little details. Because as soon as I read something that i know is incorrect, then I leap out of the story into indignation! And so with everything. Because a book is most often not really about politics but a story which is set within politics. 
    I completely understand where you are coming from;

    out of interest ever read literary review or london review of books?
  • I have in the past. Someone have me a load. Not sure which one, now! 
  • was it any good?
  • I can recall it being great. I've just been to see if I recognised it and it was Literary Review, I remember the typeface. But nowadays I only read books I've been recommended by friends as most of my reading necessarily is child oriented. Book group each week keeps us in books, and is enough for me! 
  • I had a year's subscription to the London Review of Books, but I found it a little heavy going. My husband devoured it a lot more enthusiastically!
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