Bags o' mags

This September to remember has cost a lot of reading time and encouraged a backlog of periodicals. Headway's been made, though, and this weekend we'll probably have our customary two boat bags of read magazines to drop off at a library branch for others to enjoy. Some branches don't have a swap table or rack, and some put them in an inconspiculous place. Our favorite drop-off branch is Riverside because there's always somebody there who'll be interested in the junky show-business magazines in Spanish and because the staff there always seems to be made up of members who themselves are readers, something that doesn't appear to be the case at all branches. And at Riverside, we can always find the local Spanish-language and Tejano publications to take home for ourselves, even elusive La Prensa, when it's been published. All that remains to read are two issues of New Mexico magazine, three issues of PC magazine, and a month's worth each of the Manchester Guardian, the NY Review of Books, the London Review of Books, and the TLS, plus the most recent New Yorker and Texas Gardener. We just recycle publications on newsprint and don't take them to the library. I don't think they'd be welcome at the swap bins and racks, but even so it hurts to throw reading matter away. I will never forget the trove of old Reader's Digest magazines that was tied up with string and stood as tall as I did that I was given when I was a kid. What a bonanza!