The Chicago Tribune asks is staffers every year to name their favorite magazines.
(Registration necessary - ARGH)

It’s becoming a rite of summer: Every year we ask each other what periodicals we’ve been reading, and then we ask you. Every year we argue about what makes a good magazine and why we rush to pick up certain titles or swipe them from a neighbor’s desk. We urge each other to try something new, and we smack our foreheads when a title bubbles up that we’d completely missed.

This year we’ve been paying special attention to media on the Internet. Most magazines have a Web presence, but we’ve picked out five sites that offer something special, something more than the same content we read in print. Take a look and see what you think — and please tell us what’s on your personal magazine rack these warm summer days.

I like to skim the women’s magazines that my wife gets, Golf for Women, Redbook, and Martha Stewart Living. She gets a boatload of craft and knitting magazines too that I ignore.

Here are the magazines that I read pretty thoroughly during the course of a month.

• Esquire
• Car and Driver
• Forbes
• AARP
• Stuff
• ESPN
• Maxim
• Consumer Reports
• TV Guide
• Islands
• Money

Parade, American Profile, and Relish come with the newspaper and I read those too.
Here’s some of the more unusual magazines the Tribune news staff looks at along with their comments.

• Granta. Combine fiction, fine photography and collections of essays, and what do you get? Brilliance, if it’s Granta.
• The New York Review of Books. This ancient, much-revered and now iconic magazine is still the gold standard for serious cultural criticism.
• Blueprint. From the Martha Stewart empire, her latest guide to personal style puts an emphasis on easy step-by-steps.
• Juxtapoz. The “lowbrow” art bible for those who love artists on the pop fringe.
• Paste. Too young for Rolling Stone but not young enough for Blender? Then Paste probably speaks to you.
• Lincoln Lore. With the bicentennial of Abraham Lincoln’s birth looming in 2009, where better to get the scoop on the 16th president than this quarterly publication of the Lincoln Museum in Ft. Wayne, Ind.?
• MAGIC. Because magicians are so secretive about their craft to begin with, it’s appropriate that this monthly glossy is not available at a newsstand or library - it’s only sold at magic shops and through subscription.

Out of the entire list in their article, there are only a handful that you would consider mainstream. But I give them credit for at least being open enough to try something new from time to time.

What magazines do you read?