Drama in real life.
Oh there was also an article about tourists from Nazi Germany and what they thought of the US. (The would point at our brass fire hydrants with wonder.)
I was in the hospital several years ago for an X-Ray, and a kid was in the next section, with what seemed to be his grandfather. I overheard Gramps telling the kid about this great magazine he’d like. It was called Reader’s Digest.
And I thought to myself – This is how Reader’s Digest keeps getting new customers. The old ones indoctrinate their young.
It was a little too God n’ Country for me, but the drama in real life stuff, what with people wrestling grizzlies or hiking 14000 feet down a mountain with two broken legs was kind of cool. It was the zine where I first learned about autism and anorexia nervosa and it actually printed a dirty joke.
(Woman to a girl’s mother: I don’t think your daughter should be playing football with the boys.
Mother: Don’t worry, she’ll stop once she realizes they’re tackling her to get their hands on something other than the football!)
Sounds like the old fifties-era Popular Mechanics magazines that I used to thumb through in the university library (in the 90’s, mind you) in the dead time between doing my homework and going to my evening classes.
There were few ads, the magazine was seventy or eighty pages thick, and there were long wordy articles written by grizzled veterans of woodworking or metalworking, explaining in full detail how to do cool stuff while throwing in lots of short funny anecdotes.
I can’t see how a magazine like that would fly today, but I’d sure like a subscription.
ETA: In case it isn’t clear, I don’t want a magazine with “Shakespeare in Chocolate” kind of best-left-in-the-past articles.
I’m too busy now, could you give me the… short version of the link? 
I read tons of old RDs in my youth, my grandfather seemd to had been a big fan and there was a mighty stash of them at his house. It was interesting to read the ones from the 30s and 40s. Later on I just couldn’t stomach the religious content permeating throughout it, but still I learned a hell of a lot of things from that magazine.
RD really offered a lot, back in the day. In addition to the mag and condensed books, I have an old set of Beatles LPs released by them, and my family would buy compilation 8 tracks, CDs. A little too God and country yeah, but they had some decent deals IMO.
What am I going to read on the throne when I visit mom? Oh yeah, all the past editions that she never throws away.
Several years ago I picked up my mom’s Reader’s Digest to look at the jokes, and there was one that just completely had me in stitches because, I mean, somebody misjudged their market by a mile (and I thought the RD people had their fingers on the pulses of the ancient, right?)
Why does Snoop Dogg carry an umbrella?
Fo’ drizzle!
I swear I am not making this up - I did in fact see a Snoop Dogg joke in Readers’ Digest.
I remember reading them as a child in the waiting room at the orthodontist’s office. I think they were the first publication that made me realise that American spelling differed from ours.
Don’t worry, Reader’s Digest were actually selected by their own computer and have actually won their own $100,000 prize, so are solvent again.
I remember years ago a satirical TV programme on UK TV having a go at RD. They even came up with some spoof articles, such as “My Dog Taught Me To Pray” and “New Hope For The Dead”
As a ten year old, I had foot surgery for which I was an inpaitent for a week or so. I was really bored and restless, when my dad showed me the funny stories and jokes…got me hooked on it.
And for those who say its conservative…yeah but its gotten more libral. I remember them yappping abt how Gay Men’s Health Crisis was " promoting homosexuality" back in the mid 90’s…and a recent issue actually talked about how a kid stood up for gay people…pretty damn cool!
I liked it when I was a kid, sent in some jokes and received a reply but didn’t get any of them printed. I don’t recall anyone in the family ever buying it, it just appeared. I think maybe my folks got secondhand ones into their shop.
Man, it’s one hell of a thing for a blogger from the Chicago Reader to report on Reader’s Digest going into Chapter 11.
I think they should switch format, become a magazine for restaurant reviews, and rename themselves Digester’s Reader.
Reminds me of a joke I think I saw years ago in the RD:
Two explorers were in the jungle, taking a rest. While on their rest break, one was writing something, the other was reading something. A lion came by, took a look, and ate the one who was reading, leaving the one who was writing alone. Why?
Well, writers cramp, but readers digest.
It’s true! Dad’s parents (the relatively conservative, Lutheran side of the family) had a subscription, and when I was young I’d always sit down with a stack of RDs to catch up when we were over at my grandparents’ house… to the extent that my grandparents actually got me my own subscription. I think I stopped reading it around late grade school or early high school (somewhere in the 12-14 range).
When my husband separated from the Air Force, my grandmother offered to rent her house to us, with an option to buy. We were supposed to clean up and repair things.
My grandfather was a world class packrat. Some of the things that he’d saved were valuable, others, less so. My grandparents had subscribed to RD for decades, and in the course of cleaning house I came across the stash.
I read RD’s take on the Problem of the American Negro. RD was of the opinion that the American Negro (or possibly the Colored People, don’t remember which they were called) were lazy, shiftless, had no ambition, and were generally dumber than a box of rocks. RD felt that hiring any black person for any job above janitor, maid, gardener, or cook was simply a waste of time and effort, as almost no blacks were able to cope with a job that required any intelligence or responsibility. Also, blacks didn’t really face much unwarranted discrimination, because they really WERE responsible for a lot of crime, and they really shouldn’t be hired for any job requiring a working brain. Any discrimination against blacks was justified, you see.
There was also an article about intelligent women. RD was of the opinion that intelligent women could indeed be good mothers, as long as they weren’t TOO intelligent, and as long as they focused all their energies on raising their children correctly. If a woman was over-educated, or was highly ambitious in her career, this was a danger sign, and all right-thinking men should beware of such a woman, she’d never make a good mother.
Both of those articles were published in the 40s or 50s, I’m not sure which. They were fairly typical articles of that time, too. I sort of wish that I’d saved them, for a Hall of Shame or something.
It’s centerfolding!
Reader’s Digest going bankrupt? Oh well, I guess that’s Life in These United States.