16 November 2007

My Addiction (Okay, one of them)

Bookshelves - Books
I don't know when it started, but hitting the used bookstore has been more or less a weekly thing for me. Here in the Philippines, we have a few used-book and magazine chains (Booksale, Taurus, Papyvore, Back Issue, Previously Owned Books, Books On Sale Everyday). I actually receive text messages from one of them when a new shipment has come in. I think this is a parallel to those olden days (er... the 90's) when drug dealers had pagers and soon schools started to get paranoid (you probably don't remember that, younguns!). Actually, to call my bookshelves such would be a stretch, because I rarely read books as they are outside my medical textbooks. This is one of my "true" bookshelves (the other books are about Photoshop and Corel Painter). Cookbooks. You can see some of my favorites-- Chocolate Desserts by Pierre Hermé, Cook With Jamie, How To Eat, and The Simple Art of Perfect Baking. I also have a few (ahem) graphic novels, my favorite of which is Goodbye Chunky Rice, which my brother gave me last Christmas. The others are design books, art books (Yoshitaka Amano's work is excellent, do visit an exhibit soon), and a few true books, like the Parables of Peanuts.
Bookshelves - Art
Bookshelves - Misc
My shelves should be called magazineshelves. Because I have entirely too many. Here is a shelf full of magazines on my non-food passions-- digital art and design. There are even some magazines on menswear, which as you may have guessed are mostly obsolete, either by trend or by my own adoption of a personal style.
Bookshelves - Food
And these are my food magazines, which due to their constant multiplication and pulling in and out of shelves I decided to just leave them on a stack next to my bed. Sigh. Anyway, I'm glad they're not lumped together with "Women's Interest" magazines like they are in the UK (or just Lincoln maybe, according to Graeme) because that would piss me off enormously. They're not "Cosmo"s, people!

Short list:

  • Bon Appetit - of course

  • Gourmet - though Bon Appetit edges this magazine out in photographs
  • Chocolatier - America's best dessert magazine
  • Pastry Art and Design - America's best professional pastry magazine
  • Cook's Illustrated - no-fail recipes
  • Martha Stewart Living - the recipes are always suspicious but if you need inspiration for styling anything, you can rarely beat it.
  • Food and Wine - very old issues. I don't read it anymore.
  • Fine Cooking
  • Good Food - published in the UK by BBC
  • Delicious - published in Australia (voted the #1 food magazine-- it's quite good.)
  • Cuisine at Home - what I like about it is that they have a short and long version of the recipe, sort of a summary to look through while cooking
  • Saveur - I just got into reading this magazine. Looks good.
  • Donna Hay - published in Australia by their own Domestic Goddess
  • Food and Travel - two very good things put together!
  • The Baker's Companion - produced by King Arthur Flour
  • Everyday Food - also by Martha Stewart. Recipes are dubious, again.

Design Magazines:

  • Print - my favorite non-food magazine. Lots of inspiration for print material.
  • HOW - good but edged out by Print (weirdly its sister magazine)
  • Creative Review - another stellar magazine from the UK, one of my favorites.
  • Grafik - an extra-large, excellent design magazine
  • Baseline - too large to fit anywhere.
  • Eye - excellent British design magazine with lots of commentary
  • Communication Arts - intelligent articles but too little inspiration for me.
  • CMYK - a showcase of student work in advertising, photography, and illustration
  • Design Graphics - Australian instructional magazine
  • Lino - Australian design magazine
  • I.D. - International Design, NOT the fashion magazine (that's i-D)
  • Digit - British digital design magazine. Comes with a free CD each issue.
  • Icon
  • Design Week
  • Publish RGB

Art Magazines

  • Digital Camera World - lots of fun to leaf through, also plenty of instruction
  • Digital Photo Pro - here is where I quote my good friend Charisse. "Feeling," she'd say (Filipino-speak, as in feeling like a photographer when you're really not.)
  • American Artist
  • The Artist's Magazine - comes with instruction. Yay
  • Artist's Sketchbook
  • Watercolor Magic
  • Art in America (I don't seem to see any non-American art magazines, hmmm)

Computer Magazines

  • Computer Arts and Computer Arts Projects - my favorite instructional magazine for digital design. Lots of inspiration.
  • Photoshop Creative - holds your hand too much throughout the teaching process, but a lot of fun.
  • ImagineFX - digital fantasy painting magazine
  • Corel Painter - a new magazine, looks promising. (Kind of too much like ImagineFX)
  • Photoshop User - official magazine of the NAPP. Best Photoshop magazine out there.
  • Advanced Photoshop - not as good as I thought it would be.
  • Layers (formerly Mac Design, which I also have)

Miscellaneous Magazines

  • Cargo - a defunct menswear magazine
  • Men's Vogue - replaced Cargo.... eh
  • Details
  • Vanity Fair - the best reason to own this magazine is the absolutely stunning photographs inside.

Soooo..... Anybody have a bigger selection? :)

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