Thursday, September 01, 2005

Reader's (In)Digest?!?

I have been a regular reader of Reader's Digest(RD) since a long time... But somehow the articles in the editions post 2000 dont look so good. I mean I still re-read the older editions... Thanks to Srinivas Prasad, who had an almost complete collection of RD from 1959-present, I read most of them during my B.E days in Bangalore.

I recently, chanced upon a book titled 'Fun Fare', a publication of RD(first edn 1949) which is a collection of humour and anecdotes in book form. Amongst its editors are the who's who of humour - Bennett Cerf(the maverick founder of Random House), J.P.Mc Evoy and the inimitable Groucho Marx. This book with humourous anecdotes dating back to 60-70 years still brings laughter and mirth when I read it. Same with the older editions of RD magazine. But somehow, I cant seem to associate with articles of my own generation(so anachronistic!) since it has started publishing a lot of gossip.

This has also been echoed by a couple of my friends who seem to think that the quality of material in RD has gone down drastically over the years. But wait a sec... RD is a collection of articles and bits and pieces that readers themselves send! So does this mean that the quality of readership has gone down?!?!?

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