Reader's Digest magazine and the like

[Extollager]

That thread title ought to raise a few eyebrows.

I'm not writing an autobiography, rather I'm writing short pieces from time to time as I remember things, mostly from the 1960s and 1970s. Recently it came to mind that I was pretty sure my dad's parents subscribed to this magazine, so I bought a batch of 24 issues (1968-69), and, sure enough, am finding they prompt recollections.

Why a thread, at SF Chronicles, on such seeming embodiments of mundanity as this magazine?

Well, I thought: You never know. From time to time people might remember relevant things, if only they see this subject heading. When we were youngsters, our imaginations were liable to be stirred not only by sf and fantasy, but by things such as -- remember this, anyone else? -- the coverage of the volcanic island of Surtsey, risen from the ocean waves off Iceland? RD had an article on it in the Feb. '68 issue. I'll bet some Chronsfolk saw something about it here or in National Geographic, as I did. Such things perhaps prepared one's imagination for HPL's "Temple" or the island at the end of "The Call of Cthulhu." Am I right?

I noticed, glancing over the batch of RD issues, that one has an article about Edgar Rice Burroughs. What with the mainstreaming of Lovecraft these days, I suppose it is not too unlikely that RD will feature a piece on the Haunter of Providence, condensed from a piece in Time or the like....Perhaps Mr. Joshi is writing it now.

 

[TheDustyZebra]

We had all those Reader's Digests when I was a kid -- my parents subscribed for decades, and kept them all, and I grew up reading them.

 

[ratsy]

I grew up with National Geographic and Reader's Digest in my house. My mom also had a large collection of the Reader's Digest congested books...the leather ones with 3-4 novels condensed to fit the book.

I still get Reader's digest (one of our friends gave us a subscription years ago and it just keeps coming), but I don't get a lot out of them these days. I still like Life's like that and the humor things.

 

[Ray McCarthy]

RD was sold recently for the database. It had basically died.
We had a sub not long ago and it seemed to have got taken over by Right Wing US propaganda (UK Edition). Maybe it always very right wing middle class and I was too young to know.
We had a Nat Geo sub for a couple of years but cancelled it as there seemed to be little written content of value, more about the pretty pictures.

Still, maybe I'm just a grumpy old socialist grouch.

We had RD at home in all of 1960s and part of 1970s, apparently an annual present from a friend of my father, my "godfather" and namesake (Raymond is actually genuinely my second name). It lived beside the toilet.

Reader's Digest congested books...the leather ones with 3-4 novels condensed to fit the book.

My dad passed on a lot of those. It's not leather though on ours, but fake stuff (I know where to buy it too).

 

[ratsy]

Yeah I doubt these were leather either...just had that look. I'm not sure what ever happened to all of them

 

[Extollager]

Did the Reader's Digest condensed books series ever include anything of interest?

It would have been funny if they'd done a condensed version of The Lord of the Rings during the 1965-1966 period or so when there was so much buzz about it in magazines due to its enormous appeal to Youth! I wonder if they ever nibbled Houghton Mifflin about rights to do that. Honestly, a condensed version of LOTR should have made sense to some members of the RD's audience -- Mom and Dad finding out what has Junior and Juniorette so fascinated, without the labor of turning so many pages.

 

[Ray McCarthy]

Did the Reader's Digest condensed books series ever include anything of interest?

Yes, they did.
I may list some.
But likely someone has a complete list on the Internet!

 

[Brian G Turner]

I always used to enjoy the jokes at the end of each article.

I came across some RD's relatively recently, and those funny stories were gone.

 

[Parson]

I certainly read both Reader's Digest and National Geographic as a child. They were both part of the subscriptions in my household during the 60's/70's and I recently discovered my Dad either kept getting them (I don't believe this) or he got them again because they currently arrive. I've read both of them to a degree in the past few months and both of them have aged poorly or alternatively I've become more a more discerning consumer. (Probably both) Reader's Digest was always quite "right wing." I can remember their attacks on the World Council of Churches and the National Council of Churches in the 70's. They labeled them "Communistic." Today there is little original stuff in them, mostly condensations of other magazines.

----

One of the books I read in the condensed version was "To Kill a Mocking Bird" which would have to be on anyone's list of important novels of the twentieth century.

 

[anno]

As a kid I thought their natural habitat was the Doctors waiting room...
Really bugs me that some books I read were the condensed things instead of the real deal!

 

[hitmouse]

I used to enjoy perusing RD as a kid, generally in the houses of my grandparents friends. There was generally an exciting real-life adventure, a bit of popular science, and some lame jokes. I never enhanced my word power, but I feel quite nostalgic for those journals. The same goes for old Nat Geographics from the 60-70s that my grandparents had. Heavy paper and ads for big American cars, light aircraft, and in the back, military Academies. Very exotic for someone growing up in the 1970s in dull post-war suburbs in middle England, with black & white TV and crap British cars. The Nat Geo photos were fabulous, but I always felt terribly let down by the text.

 

[Dave]

Yes, my Dad got RD and I used to read it sometimes. The subscription seemed to be something it was impossible to stop. And because he kept buying their various books and the atlas, they would never stop with the mailshots. I also liked the jokes and puzzles, but the condensed stories I found odd. Were they for people who didn't have time to read the whole book but wanted to make polite conversation about the book and pretend that they had?

NG is something I thought was printed especially for Dentists surgeries, but my son has a subscription right now. I always found them ideal for primary school projects on foreign countries. They are still mainly photographs and informatics, but they are great photographs and great informatics.

 

[Extollager]

Another magazine that some of y'all might remember was Parade, a magazine included with Sunday newspapers. For that matter-- My Weekly Reader, handed out in American schools. These periodicals, as well, of course, as the familiar Life, Newsweek, etc. occasionally featured items that might strike the imaginations of kids who were becoming sf fans.

Many sf stories combine an element of suspense, terror, horror, with the science element. Occasionally news reports in these magazines did that. Those inclined may say a prayer for the seamen who died in the 1963 Thresher submarine catastrophe. Youngsters' imaginations as well as sympathies might be stirred by such reports -- imagining the crew packed into a high-tech craft in a strange environment and then overwhelmed.

http://www.nationalgeographic.com/k19/disasters_detail2.html

The June 1964 National Geographic told about Thresher. I don't mean that reading such reports gave kids a morbid appetite for claustrophobic sf thrillers, but that these reports could have impressed on youthful imaginations the possibility of such things and have prepared them to read sf stories about people who have to deal with the threat of death in space or from an alien atmosphere, etc. Too, I think kids who become readers are often struck by words. I have the sense that I was intrigued by bathyscaphe even as I felt some sense of dread in thinking about the crushed submarine that the bathyscaphe was seeking. And something as innocuous-seeming as a Weekly Reader or Reader's Digest might move a young person's imagination with the suggestion of strange peril and death. Egyptian tombs in National Geographic...strange names.... After all these years I remember reading of "Abu Simbel" in one of those magazines....Here's an issue with an Abu Simbel cover story and coverage of Apollo 8, too... things to interest a young budding sf reader.

 

[Extollager]

Reader's Digest was always quite "right wing."

One does remember, though, the speech Susan Sontag gave in 1982, wherein she asked, ''Imagine, if you will, someone who read only the Reader's Digest between 1950 and 1970, and someone in the same period who read only The Nation or The New Statesman. Which reader would have been better informed about the realities of Communism? The answer, I think, should give us pause. Can it be that our enemies were right?''

https://www.nytimes.com/books/00/03/12/specials/sontag-communism.html

It's an interesting article.

 

[Ray McCarthy]

''Imagine, if you will, someone who read only the Reader's Digest between 1950 and 1970, and someone in the same period who read only The Nation or The New Statesman.

Both people would have been poorly informed, a daft alternative.
One should never use a single source.

 

[Extollager]

The Jan. 1968 issue of RD includes "The Day the U. S. Was Destroyed" by Stewart Alsop, condensed from the Saturday Evening Post of 21 Oct. 1967, described by the author as an "experiment in science fiction." In 1971, agents for Communist China, using the cover of the American-International Shrimp Company, rent trucks from Hertz and Avis to load up nuclear devices brought to docks in Texas and Florida. The trucks proceed to various strategic destinations around the country and the devices are detonated. US authorities assume the simultaneous explosions are the work of the USSR and attack the Soviet Union, which responds in kind. Both powers are effectively destroyed. China becomes the great world power. Alsop sees no technical reason why this scenario couldn't be effected, and notes that Mao Tse-tung may already be insane...

 

[Ray McCarthy]

China won't do it then or now. Exports to USA!
North Korea or some other maniac with no economic USA / Russia dependency might!

 

[Extollager]

This is a tangent: but how about the Book-of-the-Month Club? Yes, I know there was a Science Fiction Book Club for many years (but it's gone now, isn't it?). But does anyone remember the BoMC as featuring things that, in some way or other, stirred the interest of people who were or would become sf and fantasy fans?

The BoMC did offer T. H. White's Lilliputian fantasy Mistress Masham's Repose and probably his Once and Future King... Does anyone read these any more, by the way?

 

[J Riff]

BOTM was annoying when scouting for books. A SF novel found in a box at a flea market... the heartrate goes up, then down as it turns out to be a BOTM selection instead of a 1st Ed.
The early NGs were pretty racy, they are collectible today.

 

[chongjasmine]

I used to read reader's digest when I was younger.