Outwitting the Fox

I've had several phone calls from the nice people in the office at Slightly Foxed asking why I hadn't renewed my subscription from last year.We had an interesting and friendly conversation.
£32 for four issues is quite a hefty amount to pay up front when you have grossly over-commited on other subscriptions which you definitely think you can't live without.This coupled with a book buying habit based on the argument that I don't smoke 6000 cigarettes a day so look how much money I save.
All of this made me feel terrible because of course you want to try and support new literary ventures and my commitment would clearly help a fraction.
I've been looking carefully at existing magazine subscriptions (the list with links is a scrollstroll down over on the right hand side of the blog) and some I have decided are very definitely for the chop.
First to go The Women's Review of Books, a re-launch of a U.S magazine and far too way off the feminist richter scale for me to appreciate in a balanced way.Take an ordinary book and give it the extreme feminist slant and you inevitably have to give the chaps a going over. Personally I'm getting bored with this approach.
Mslexia may be another casualty, I'm not reading it cover to cover, in fact I'm hardly picking it up.
Addictions are The Literary Review which I do read cover to cover several times over and have taken for about 10 years now. I delve back in it for reviews, I have laboriously tagged the contents on librarything which means I can find reviews on any author easily.
Newbooks is so cheap it's ridiculous not to subscribe and you do get a good reader's eye view of what may be worth reading plus free books.Oh yes, and of course occasionally they publish pieces I write. A belated welcome to anyone who has found their way here from this month's article on blogging.
Not literary but ambrosia for my creative soul is Selvedge magazine, a sumptuously produced and varied look at the world of  fibres and textiles and one that always inspires me with colour.That stays.
So where does this leave Slightly Foxed?
Well they took note of my plea and persuaded my local bookshop to stock it. Wouldn't it be a good idea if the bookshop stocked some of the books discussed? That's a bit advanced for my local.Small steps.The loyalty card suggestion was received with gaze- avoidance and a grunt.
The latest edition has an excellent piece on Guiseppe De Lampedusa's The Leopard written by John De Falbe of John Sandoe Books, who coincidentally has written an excellent editorial in this month's Literary Review on Independent Bookshops.If I don't read The Leopard soon...
There's a piece on the purchase of Edith Wharton's library which I had no idea had at one time been owned by that old diarist and MP Alan Clark.Then there's another piece on old favourite and must be re-visited, Barbara Pym.
Coming up next time I see Anne Boston writing on Giorgio Bassani's In the Garden of the Finzi-Continis which is all the excuse I shall need to buy that one so to be honest Slightly Foxed, you did have me hooked and have very cunningly and painlessly reeled me in.