TS: LRB VS TLS

Plus I wrote a book and the TLS reviewed it and the LRB didn't, so the TLS is automatically superior.

The NYRB roX0rs my boX0rs.

lrb >>>>>

There was a blog recently about the LRB not having enough women writers, cf. the VIDA counts. Blog author was saying they'd cancel their subscription.

I was shocked at the VIDA counts - which looked at percentage of content by men vs content by women across a number of journals and magazines, and the numbers skewed heavily toward male writers - but equally I was slightly bemused by the wave of commenters saying they were going to cancel their subscriptions, in a world where, you know, lad mags and tabloids still exist

subs are super-cheap at the moment, £30 for 30 issues.
ian penman mod article this issue:
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v35/n16/ian-penman/even-if-you-have-to-starve

Been reading TLS more and more for fiction reviews this year! They write about novels and poetry I am more interested in more often.

LRB is still good on non-fiction.

Like this huuge piece on Angola

Read it!

Its really good!

yeah v interesting, always been intrigued by that area of history - since meeting a friend of my dad's who was a medic with the cuban army during the conflict - but have never read up on it.

enjoyed this piece about chilcot and maxwellisation too

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v38/n06/frederick-wilmot-smith/blame-robert-maxwell

LRB vs. NYRB? I didn't want to start a new thread for it - in part, somewhat, to the inexplicable existence of four of these TLS vs LRB ones (?) already.

I've subscribed to both in the past and would like to start up one again as a Chrismukkah gift to myself (I think both would be a bit indulgent, not to mention hard to keep up with), but I keep going back and forth between the two.

I like the LRB' regular contributors better and prefer it's "politics", so to speak over the NYRB. But, yeah, the NYRB is twice as long and I reliably will always find at least 1-2 very good or interesting articles in each issue. My personal antipathy to, say, reviews of books on Elizabethan history in the former is more or less cancelled out by reviews of books on the founding fathers in the latter. Each of them have been great at bringing books to my attention throughout the year that I may not otherwise have looked at (or heard about).

Curious to hear anyone else's thoughts on the matter!

There's a Perry Anderson essay on LRB vs NYRB in Spectrum. It's been a long time since I've read it but I enjoyed it at the time. Can't find a complete version on web but here's a google books scan with a few pages missing

I've only ever been subscribed to the LRB, via a precocious friend of mine in college who would gift me his Get A Friend Hooked free subscriptions, but I've read enough NYRB on print and on web to have formed the following impressions

LRB is more explicitly left-wing (in particular New Left), NYRB more centrist along the lines of NYT or New Yorker
LRB tends more academic + musty, NYRB more pop-culture friendly
NYRB is more timely and topical (I find there's usually a longer lag between a major foreign policy event and the LRB write-up, but it may be longer and more of a deep-dive)

Those are good points and I agree with each of the impressions. Perry Anderson's essays are actually one of my favourite things about the LRB! As a side note, I'm waiting for the (eventual?) book, which will collect the ones on Brazil, China, Russia, etc. that he's published over the years. I'll have to see if I can find the essay online or a copy of Spectrum at the library - I'd love to read his thoughts on both.

I do wonder what the NYRB will look like when Bob Silvers hands over the editorial reins.

Maybe a better question is LRB personals vs NYRB ones...

I enjoy them both. Subscribe to the LRB, but the NYRB is reliably available from my local library via Zinio (and also easily found in pirate PDFs online if that's your thing).

Oh man, I never would have thought to check Zinio. I assumed they didn't go for that kind of thing, given how step their paywalls and digital access can be.

Amazing, thanks so much for mentioning that!

:)

The LRB published what seems like a dreck of a piece on Grenfell. Its 65K, a housing journalist politely picked it apart:

1. Thread on the Andrew O’Hagan Grenfell article in the LRB. Can’t say I’ve read every word but I’ve tried to pick out the key points and take them in the order they’re presented.

— Luke Barratt (@lukewbarratt) May 30, 2018

And a further takedown here: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jun/08/fake-news-grenfell-fire-andrew-ohagan?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Tweet

I wish people would call it lying, shit journalism or something, anything other than "fake news".

That guardian piece is pretty reasonable although this is dumb and the answer is obvious:

But it’s simply wrong to claim that public, press and activists were united in their efforts to blame the council, and pin everything on its leader, Nicholas Paget-Brown, and his deputy, Rock Feilding-Mellen. If this were the case, how on earth did the Conservatives get re-elected to run the council only last month?

o'hagan's piece is far too combative, self-righteous, tendentious, and artistically licensed, which is a shame as he does make interesting points about the council's response vs. the visibilty & media picture of their response.