Not exactly light reading, but I like it

The latest issue of my favorite medical journal, Emerging Infectious Diseases, is now out on-line. EID in general is not exactly light reading, but it always contains some fascinating material, the cover is almost always gorgeous (this month's actually falls more into the category of 'interesting' for me; I've never been big on portraits) -- and the editor not only selects an intriguing painting to grace the cover, she also provides a detailed history of the piece and the artist and then ties it to current issues in infectious disease and public health. I always kind of wonder which comes first with the editor -- does the cover art influence the contents for any particular month, or does she look at the line-up of articles and then go looking for the art?

EID is packed cover to cover with the type of material I spend my days editing, so I do take a professional interest in seeing how journal articles look in their final format (although nothing I've edited since I started my current job has been published in EID -- everything my authors have done has gone into much, much less appealing publications, like Vaccine). Of course, part of EID's appeal for me is that unlike many of the professional journals out there, EID practices plain language (or close to it; some polysyllables and technical terms are unavoidable). No strange abbreviations or acronym soup, just nicely organized articles that present interesting information.

That said, my favorite part of this month's issue is "Bedtime at Nana and Pop's House." It actually is light reading.