SUPPOSE YOU WANT TO DO ONE OF THE FOLLOWING: try out a new recipe for supper this weekend, start planning next summer’s vacation, get some ideas on whether to redecorate or renovate your living room, check out the performance of a couple cars you’ve had your eye on, decide which movie to see Friday night, or see what anybody who’s anybody has to say about the President’s most recent speech. If you want to do any or all of the above, you might consult a good magazine, and you might start by going to just about any one of several magazine racks in Aberdeen to survey the possibilities.

    Magazines are a wonderful invention, an entertaining way of delivering up-to-date—or at least recent—information. But many stores in Aberdeen carry magazines. Which magazine rack is the best, what’s the difference among them, and what choices do we have? From convenience stores to grocery stores to big box retailers to a book store, A-List took a look.

    And the winner is: Cheers for Little Professor Bookcenter for having the best magazine rack in town. But that’s as it should be since Little Professor is an information center. You go there to buy information, so it makes sense that you’d find a wider selection of magazines there. You go to a supermarket for food, a discount store for cheap prices, and a convenience store for, well, convenience. Magazines in those places are a perk, not your reason for going there. So here’s another reason to go to Little Professor!

    With about 30 feet of shelf space devoted to about 350 different magazine titles, Little Professor wins the local title. David tops Goliath in a reasonably close battle. The world’s largest store, Walmart, comes in a close second, with about 20 feet of shelf space holding about 300 titles. Other stores carry many magazines too, but these two are the top contenders.

    Little Professor wins for more than just number, however. Those numbers translate into variety. I identified about 30 categories of magazines as I visited various racks. Little Professor ended up with either a lead or a statistical tie with number two in all but two categories. Walmart had about twice as many teen and kids magazines as Little Professor. On the other hand, Little Professor had significantly more science, business, history, entertainment, and men’s and women’s fitness and style titles. It even held its own in automotive, sports, and gun magazines. Most significantly, the Professor keeps current on the news, with several major newsweeklies on its shelves, compared to none across the road (I didn’t count the tabloids by the checkstands.)

    Of course, there are only so many magazines in the world, and when you’re talking hundreds of magazines on the shelves, you know there will be overlap. The top two stores, as well as the other big magazine racks, have many of the same magazines. So what’s the difference?

    Besides staying current on what’s happening in the world, Little Professor has more magazines for the artist (writers and photographers, especially), the traveler, and the history buff. As previously noted, you’ll find more magazines for teens and children at the big box stores.

    The big boxes (K-mart, ShopKo), while having fairly large selections, seem to have fewer food titles. Maybe that isn’t surprising since the stores don’t sell much in the way of food. Target is another story, however. It easily had the smallest magazine rack of all of the big stores—after all, you don’t see many magazines or books in those hot, hip TV commercials.

    Kudos to Aberdeen’s homegrown grocery stores for keeping current. Kessler’s and Ken’s both have similar selections to the big boxes, but they also carry some weekly news and sports magazines. Other than tabloids by the checkstands (and TV Guide and People), the big stores don’t seem to want to know what’s new in the world.

    What’s missing in Aberdeen? Remember the list at the beginning of this article of things you can find in magazines? The list didn’t include things like the latest short story by the hottest new stylist, a socialist critique of the Medicare prescription drug plan, a critical review of a mixed media art exhibit in New York, an interview with a rabbi on the West Bank, or a scientific study of a new business management technique. There were virtually no political or religious magazines anywhere in town. We’re also limited in the number and variety of business and high tech offerings. While we can find some magazines for aspiring artists or arts hobbyists, real fine-arts magazines aren’t to be found, with a few interesting exceptions. Little Professor carries American Theatre, Communication Arts (which must be read only by the publisher of this magazine), and an actual arts journal called Afterall, which, in its articles and images, might be downright subversive! Still, the universe of arts and culture magazines is much wider than we find here in town. (Inquiring minds might be rewarded by checking out our local public and college libraries’ magazine collections, however.)

    So, Aberdeen’s magazine racks, with their numerous titles, probably satisfy most information appetites, even as they leave wide areas virtually untapped. But they do inch into some of those locally uncharted territories and no doubt pique some interest and whet some appetites for more. And in a true market economy, if we customers want more interesting magazines, our stores will bring us more—but at what potential price? After all, how you gonna keep ’em down on the farm after they’ve seen Paris Match?