Listen to the Rain

I don't actually remember how I heard about Kinfolk originally, but I started following them on Twitter months ago and heard them talking about the Japan issue and that got me hooked. I devoured the whole thing in less than an hour, and then immediately went to softlykarou and asked her if we could subscribe. And we did, and the Aged issue came...and then I let it sit for a while, because I have to admit that the concept didn't grab me quite as much as the Japan issue did. Then I read it today.

It's a mix. There's recipes, like this lamb shepherd's pie recipe that softlykarou made that was absolutely fantastic, because I'm not a huge fan of mashed potatoes even though I'll tolerate them on shepherd's pie because it's so tasty, and with this recipe I don't have to worry about that at all. There's photo series like this one about centenarians' hands or this one about glaciers. There's short articles, like one about preserving or curing foods or or one about Shaker crafts or one about how your tastes change with age.

I know that last one's true, because just in the last few years I've grown to like onions, which softlykarou always used to have to leave out of everything because I hated them; beets, especially when they're pickled; and olives, though black ones are still a stretch. That last one is especially worrisome for softlykarou, because of the How I Met Your Mother rule about olives in relationships.

The one thing bothers me is that none of the articles are more than a two-page spread unless they're recipes, where you might sometimes get a photo and an interview with the chef, or photo essays. I'd really like if there were more long-form articles--or "longreads," I suppose is the current parlance--but I guess that has the benefit that any of the articles I didn't really care about were over pretty quickly.

The Lost Art of Reading Aloud especially stuck with me because for the last year or so, I've been intermittently reading The Lord of the Rings aloud to softlykarou, and I'm noticing a lot of stuff that I hadn't noticed before even when I've read it probably a dozen times. It's more obvious how much the language changes from being similar to The Hobbit to being similar to The Silmarillion. Some of the subtle humor in the character interactions. It probably helps that I'm using different voices for different characters, which softlykarou has commented on as being something she really enjoys.

I was also surprised by just how much I liked sitting down with an actual paper magazine in my hands to read it. The new magazine smell, the feel of the paper, the way the light glints of the magazine gloss... I've almost entirely switched over to ebook and PDF since I got an iPad, because the convenience of being able to carry almost all of my RPG collection plus a small library around in my satchel is just too high, but I definitely enjoyed the act of reading the Aged issue more than I liked the Japan issue even though I liked the content of the Japan issue better.

Man, I really am a hipster.