Average Rating: 
Rating:  - Martha Stewart Living: Not Worth the Price
Yes, Wesport maven Martha Stewart has a wealth of ideas to share with readers of all ages. Yes, she's a whiz at decorating, designing sheets, patio furniture and cookware. Yes, she can set an elegant dinner party table. She can also put you in the mood for Christmas, the 4th of July and Halloween. And yes, her recipe for lemonade is truly delicious.
But so can a lot of other people: mainly, the staff at Better Homes and Garden and the people responsible for the far superior British design, home and gardening magazines. Next to them, Stewart's magazine idea's seem artifical, dull and hardly worth the bother.
Ms. Stewart also makes the mistake of thinking everyone is a crafts master with a hefty budget to play with. Wrong!
Ok, I know what you're thinking.
But I still love her lemonade.
Back to business.
In its favor, the magazine "Living" has great covers, great ads and is printed on the best stock. But once you check out what the Brits are doing, you'll leave "Martha Stewart's Living" on the magazine shelf to gather dust.
Rating: - Well-presented, Unique, Helpful, Tasteful
Martha Stewart Living magazine--one of many of Martha's current projects--is a magazine that traverses all levels of domestic life, attempting to ameliorate household problems and enhance every day urban and suburban living. In its glossy pages, helpful ideas, recipes, tips, and steps for everything from upholstering furniture to planting those trees you never seem to have the time to plant, abound. Special features like "Ask Martha" cover ideas and topics the magazine would never have time to cover through its highly structured articles. While, many of these articles feature things we'd never attempt to complete, "The Guide" offers ways to procure the various elements and ingredients required to accomplish these creations and feats of ingenuity. "Special" themed issues, focus on everything from gardening to decorating, and are great reference sources when remodeling your house or planting a burgeoning bush of roses.Still, Martha Stewart Living is not without its faults. Copious amounts of advertisements abound, and easily annoy when trying to locate a certain article or feature. Martha's pretentious style and language, which seems to transcend her television show, subtracts and adds to the content of the articles, depending on the subject matter. But the greatest foible of this magazine is the fact that Martha has very little hand in the writing, composition, and photography of the articles. Perhaps her three television shows, commitment to her stock on the New York Stock Exchange, her other magazines (including "Baby," "Kids," and "Weddings"), books, and various K-mart "Everyday" lines take away a majority of Martha's time, but one would think that she'd attempt to include more self-penned articles than simply "A Letter from Martha" and "Remembering" features within the magazine, considering she slaps her name almost everywhere else in the magazine. To compound matters, Martha has over-saturated the market, causing less time to be spent on the magazine, and consequent quality irregularities and size differences (ranging from one hundred and fifty pages to three hundred pages per issue) within the magazine. Despite some glaring negative points of the magazine, one cannot help but indulge in a subscription and the brief peek into the life of the social elite and well-connected, even just for a few pages.
Rating:  - She's an inspiration
I've bought all her magazines since 1997 from Living to Weddings to Baby to Kids to all her Special Issues and I love them all. I've kept every single issue. Martha is a teacher. I've learnt how to make bridal bouquets with her awesome step-by-step instructions (Summer 2000, page 128) How to clean hard-wood floors (Sept '01, page 130) annual gardening issues (March). Articles featuring various types of tomatoes, squash, eggplants, peppercorns, mustard ... the list is endless. Her 101 articles is awesome too, e.g. pumpkin pie 101, fried chicken 101. I enjoy cooking from her recipes (and also Julia Child's 'Way to Cook' - whom I admire tremendously as well). Cooking, gardening, house-keeping ... it's all a passion, it's how well you want to do it. I wasn't happy just slapping dinner down on the table, each time I cook something, I want it to be even better than the first time I did it. Martha shows you how and she truly loves to teach, when you read the magazine from cover to cover, you will realise that. You will learn many things. Read about a 97 year old gentleman hybridzing at least 150 Siberian Iris, how he did it etc. (March '99) you will be amazed at the colors and his energy. I look forward to seeing it at the news-stands every month. I hope you do too.
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