September Songs: The Good News about Marriage in the Later Years by Maggie Scarf

Still trying to catch up on back issues of The Economist, but I couldn’t resist reading part of the current issue dated August 30, 2008.

In “It gets better, or so they say” from the Books & Arts section, I read about Maggie Scarf’s new book September Songs: The Good News about Marriage in the Later Years.

Maggie Scarf is a journalist, author, a visiting fellow at Yale University’s  Whitney Humanities Center and a writer in residence at Yale University’s Jonathan Edwards College.

I haven’t read any of her other books (Unfinished Business: Pressure Points in the Lives of Women, Intimate Partners: Patterns in Love and Marriage, Intimate Worlds: How Families Thrive and Why They Fail, and Secrets, Lies, Betrayals: How the Body Holds the Secrets of a Life, and How to Unlock Them) but reading about her latest book makes me think that I would be interested in reading several of her works.

I am surprised by the book’s conclusion that marriage in later year improves and I would like to learn more about the studies that Scarf describes.

Click here to read a synopsis from the author’s website.

Magazines and Newspapers

As I’ve mentioned before, I am a faithful reader of the New York Times, The Atlantic, Technology Review, and The Economist — have been for nearly a decade.

Still, I haven’t really looked at any other news publications in quite some time and wondered if anyone had any new recommendations?

Should I quit reading the New York Times in favor of the Washington Post?

Or maybe I should start reading Harper’s? Or Barron’s?

Am I missing out by not reading Foreign Policy? What about the Wilson Quarterly?

Or maybe you think all newspapers and magazines are old fashioned and you’d like to recommend some blogs?

I should mention that I do also read these publications (with decidedly less frequency, though at one point or another I have held a subscription to these): PINK, Scientific American, Seed, Outside, Vegetarian Times, Wall Street Journal, the New Yorker, Shambhala Sun, tricycle, Radar, Plenty, and Hallmark.

And some of the other unusual subscriptions I’ve held?

• Organic Gardening
• Body + Soul
• Harper’s Bazaar
• Horticulture
• Saveur
• Fast Company
• Inc.
• Travel + Leisure
• National Geographic
• Organic Style
• Harvard Business Review
• Budget Living
• Health
• Gourmet
• Metropolitan Home
• Psychology Today
• Red Herring
• Running Times
• Garden Design
• Kiplinger’s Personal Finance
• Qualified Remodeler
• Art in America
• MIT Sloan Management Review
• Berkshire Living
• National Geographic Adventure
• Lucky
• Tennis
• Contract
• PC Magazine
• strategy+business

Man, just looking at this list makes me a little dizzy.

Thoughts?

Economist Audio Edition

I’ve been a faithful reader of The Atlantic, New York Times, The Economist for years. I read a few other magazines and newspapers — PINK, Scientific American, Seed, Outside, Vegetarian Times, and Technology Review — my main sources of economic and political information comes from those first two publications.

I’ve had trouble keeping up with the issues so last week I finally decided to try the Economist’s audio edition. In 2007, it was the first leading international publication to offer a full audio edition.

And I was pleasantly surprised. While it certainly won’t save you time to listen to the full issues instead of reading them, the quality of the audio edition is superb! Somehow, they manage to provide the entire weekly publication (word for word) but do so with wonderful orators that make it a joy to listen to.