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This is not a blog which opines on current events. It rather uses incidents, books (old and new), links and papers to muse about our social endeavours.
So old posts are as good as new! And lots of useful links!

The Bucegi mountains - the range I see from the front balcony of my mountain house - are almost 120 kms from Bucharest and cannot normally be seen from the capital but some extraordinary weather conditions allowed this pic to be taken from the top of the Intercontinental Hotel in late Feb 2020

Saturday, June 20, 2020

An Update of “Journals worth reading”

As the number of newspaper titles shrinks, the number of weekly, monthly and even quarterly journals seems to increase. It’s 3 years since I last tried to identify quality journals which might be of interest to my readers – so today I will update that.
I started that earlier post by posing the following question - which (English language) journals would pass a test which included such criteria as –
- Depth of treatment
- Breadth of coverage (not just political)
- Cosmopolitan in taste (not just anglo-saxon)
- clarity of writing
- sceptical in tone

That’s a tough test – but my new list has quite a few new titles for your consideration…..
3 Quarks Daily; my daily fix - an amazing site which offers carefully chosen articles which suit my demanding taste perfectly
Aeon; an impressive cultural journal (online since 2012) whose articles are about big issues and have real “zing”
Arts and Letters Daily; the last list missed this great daily internet service which highlights an article and book – even although it’s long been essential viewing for me
Book Forum; has gone downhill – used to offer an amazing daily service which gave links from mainly US academic journals…..
Boston Review; a new mag which I rate very highly for originality
Brain Pickings; a superb personal endeavour from a Bulgarian woman now living in the States which, every week, gives extended excerpts from classic texts about creativity etc. Recently, however, I’ve found it a bit too predictable
Current affairs; a fairly new bi-monthly and slightly anarchistic American mag
Dissent; a US leftist stalwart 
Eurozine; a network of some 90 European cultural mags which gives a great sense of the diversity of European writing
Jacobin; a new leftist E-mag with a poor literary style. Indeed, with its large print, different coloured paper and photos, it’s more like a comic!
Lettre International; a fascinating quarterly published in German, Italian, Spanish, Hungarian and Romanian.
Literary Hub; a great literary site with daily selections and frequent posts
London Review of Books; my favourite for the past 40 years to which I generally subscribe
Los Angeles Review of Books; relatively new and trying too hard to run with the politically correct 
Monthly Review; an old US stalwart with good solid analysis
Mother Jones; more journalistic US progressive
N+1; a centrist mag published only 3 times a year
New Humanist; an important monthly strand of UK thought
New Left Review; THE UK leftist journal - running on a quarterly basis since 1960. Always worth a look 
Prospect (UK); rather too smooth centrist UK monthly
The American Prospect (US); ditto US
Public Books – an impressive recent website (2012) to encourage open intellectual debate
Quillette; a "free-thinking" contrarian and libertarian journal 
Resurgence and Ecologist; dependable UK Green mag
Sceptic; celebration of important strand of UK scepticism
Scottish Review; a fantastic weekly with humanistic takes on what’s happening
Social Europe; a european social democratic E-journal whose short articles are a bit too predictable for my taste
Soundings; if you want to keep up with UK leftist thought, this is the journal for you – issued only 3 times a year
Spiked; a libertarian net-based journal with challenging articles always guaranteed to be anti-PC
Sydney Review of Books; still can’t make up my mind
The Alternative UK; an excellent new platform aimed at establishing a "friendly revolution" to transform politics - it actually gives  space to interesting new thinkers
The Atlantic; one of the US oldest mags (founded in 1857)
The Baffler; great writing. Apparently founded in 1988, it surfaced for me only recently
The Conversation; a rare venture which uses academics as journalists 
The Nation; America's oldest (1865) weekly, for the "progressive" community
The New Republic; Progressive US monthly which has been publishing for more than a century
The New Yorker; very impressive US writing
The New York Review of Books; simply can’t do without it
The Point;  a quiet mag to which I’ve taken out a trial sub
Washington Independent Review; a new website borne of the frustration about the disappearance of so many book review columns
Words without Borders; a journal of translation which I’m experimenting with

Academic journals
I would not normally deign academic journals with a second glance since theirs is an incestuous breed – with arcane language and specialized focus which breaches at least two of the above five tests. But Political Quarterly stands apart with the superbly written (social democratic) analyses which have been briefing us for almost a century and to which I have recommenced an (internet) sub.
Parliamentary AffairsWest European Politics and Governance run it close with more global coverage.

My own regular favourite reading includes The Guardian Long Reads and book reviewsLondon Review of Books and the New York Review of Books – and the occasional glance at the New Left Review and New Statesman.
This choice betrays a certain “patrician” position – partial but not too “tribal
A concept with unrealized potential, I feel, is that of the “global roundup” ” with selections of representative writing from around the globe. Courrier international is a good, physical, Francophone example – the others being “virtual” or E-journals eg Arts and Letters Daily a good literary, anglo-saxon exemplar; with Eurozine taking the main award for its selection of the most interesting articles from Europe’s 90 cultural journals

I found this list of previous posts about journalists when drafting this piece -
The archive on journalism

















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