I am delighted to join the Hive book club. Just today I read a post by 
When growing up I had my fill of Enid Blyton and the Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys series. After that, did not get into serious book reading. Instead, I devoted my time to reading magazines. Especially the bound old issues of Reader's Digest. My late dad had collected it and bound it for us children to read later on. So, to me, it was the real treasure that I still own. Also, I do not show it to the people who drop by because I have 'lost' too many books to people who do not care to return them. Have you had such an experience?
Besides Reader's Digest, I also used to read Illustrated weekly, Chandamama in English, and many others in local languages too. The benefit of reading magazines such as Chandamama, Tinkle, Reader's Digest, and the rest is that we will stay up to date with worldly information besides enjoying the other articles as well.
I do agree that the present version of these very magazines seems a bit too flashy for me because of all the shift from classic to modern. The website of Reader's digest has more than enough flashy stuff to interest the present reader with promises of prizes, loot, and jackpots.
In my opinion, the genuine reader does not need such promises to read a book. In fact, such stuff may put him or her off and keep people away from subscribing too. Oh well, it's a personal choice, I guess.
Some of the pages I loved to read in Reader's Digest were - Life is like that, Humour in uniform, real-life stories, All in a day's work, Enrich your vocabulary, and the like.
If you are interested, please search for articles that are listed for free on the website - https://archive.org/search.php?query=readers+digest&sin=TXT
The photos I posted above have been taken by me. Sorry for the slanted look as I was trying to balance the book and try to take the photo.
Do you love to read such old magazines too or am I one of a kind? I would love to know if you guys also take the time to read such issues either from home or the library.
I got the love of reading from my parents who were voracious readers and from my school where we students were given the freedom to visit the library any time during recess and also got two periods in the week to spend time reading. We used to exchange books too after finishing reading our quota for the week. We were allowed to borrow one book for a week and most of us read it completely within a day. Thus the exchange mostly took place on the bus ride back home. Those were the days, sigh.
I wish the children would spend some real time reading real books instead of watching shorts or TikTok on mobiles.
If you can, do gift a book to a child rather than something else.
We at 
Images - sayee