You go here to shower and you go here to brush your
teeth. You go here to look in the mirror
and you here to find peace. Most of all
you go here to read a magazine for a couple minutes before going back to real
life.
Magazines capture the reader through catchy headings and
vivid cover images. Every magazine is laid
out differently though, some tell you the page number on the cover and some you
have to look a couple pages inside the front cover. Either way I think about my first grade
students reading their “level 16” non-fiction texts and how they are similar to
the magazines I read while taking a restroom break. I rarely read the magazine from front cover
to back cover, I don’t read every single word especially if it doesn’t interest
me in any way. Some people probably do.
I talked with my grandfather and he said he reads the TIME magazine from
beginning to end before he is “done” with it. When I think about my strategy
for reading an article I think I read the bold headings first and then the
words underneath and connect it back to the bold heading so I can remember it. I
also like to look at the quotes and pictures first, kind of like a picture
walk, before I’m captured and sucked in to the story.
I also like to embrace
the wide variety of magazines out there; they have Golf Digest for my dad, Better Homes and Gardens for my mom,
Psychology Today for my boyfriend, Seventeen for my adolescent self, Rock
Climbing for my college self, and Instructor for my teacher self. Whatever topic you are interested in, there
is literature out there for you to read and absorb. Don’t even get me started on the availability
of “magazines” because they have been attached to the internet and most have
applications for mobile devices and tablets.
Next thing you know everyone will just bring their handheld devices to
the bathroom and not even bother with paper produced magazines.
