I decided to purchase and savor one quality magazine each quarter. It’s an item on my 21 for 2021 list.
My choice for the winter quarter: Magnolia Journal.
Thought it might be fun to share my thoughts about my “fancy” magazines. First, let me say I love magazines. However, I typically only subscribe when I find a free on-line deal. Mostly that means doing surveys and sometimes limited choices. Of all the magazines arriving, I think I’d probably be willing to pay for perhaps one subscription and that’s a maybe.
Basically, I’m telling you it’s hard for me justify shelling out money for a magazine. However, I do love flipping through their pages.
So, is Magnolia Journal worth it?
The Basics
Price: $7.99
Seems a bit steep to me. By comparison, the cover of Better Homes and Gardens list price is $3.99.
I justified the expense by using a grocery store gift card I had in my purse.
The current subscription rate is $20/year so discounted to $5 an issue. (Better Homes and Gardens arrives in my mailbox for free from some long ago forgotten deal)
First Impressions
The first thing I noticed about the magazine was the pages. Not the content of the pages but rather the quality of the pages themselves. The pages are a heavier weighted paper than your typical magazine. Gave it a bit of a more luxurious feel.
The Good
Don’t you hate when you pick up a magazine and read more ads than content? I was impressed with how the ads seemingly flowed without interrupting the content. And I do think the magazine contained more content than ads.
The articles lacked the redundancy many magazines suffer from when all relate to a singular theme.
Many articles and pages had spaces for journaling your own thoughts within the magazine.
The interviews were interesting and engaging.
The recipe section contained appetizing food that called for regular ingredients.
Complaint Section
Before I share my limited gripe about this issue, I want to give a slight pass since as a winter issue, Christmas pretty much had to be addressed. I mostly enjoyed the Christmas articles even in February.
However, the one way the magazine did stay cliche? The ubiquitous in all magazines published around a holiday, an over-priced gift guide. While the gifts were at least varied in price, the cheapest women’s gift: $25 for a set of 3 loose-leaf teas. However, most of the gifts averaged out to about $50.
And perhaps it’s because I have teenagers that I noticed, they were completely overlooked in the gift guide section. I can forgive this as I know their kids aren’t at that stage yet but I can’t advise buying any child a $70 backpack. Certainly, didn’t see any affordable ideas if you were gift shopping for more than one child on a limited budget. Perhaps, I’m not the gift-guide target audience. Happens a lot these days, realizing I’m not the target audience of shows, games, and now apparently magazine gift guides.
Overall Impression
Actually, impressed.
Have you read this magazine? What are your thoughts?