I don’t read many paper magazines nowadays, but I appreciate good magazine covers. I’ve been working for magazines for decades and have learned that coming up with eye-grabbing, meaningful covers is the most challenging aspect of publishing. CoverJunkie collects the best covers from magazines all over the world. They have an Instagram account, which is the best way to browse the gallery. — MF

Not enough people know about Jason Kottke’s blog, Kottke. Jason’s official full time job is to surf around the web looking for truly interesting stuff, which he posts along with a paragraph of why he found it remarkable. He creates a handful daily, and has for 18 unbelievable years! No clickbait, no barrage of ads and no soap box. Just old-school blogging about neat things. — KK

Designer Sean Tejaratchi’s website LiarTownUSA contains Sean’s profoundly absurd (and occasionally R-rated) parody book covers, TV show credits, collectible plates, store signs, and advertising ephemera. He’s a genius. — MF

Cartoonist Danny Hellman did a lot of illustrations for “Boing Boing” when it was a zine in the 1990s. His Instagram feed reveals his fascination with European cemetery statuary, and his photos reveal some striking examples. — MF

I really look forward to getting the twice-weekly, Marriage Minute, by The Gottman Institute. The advice given is based on more than 40 years of research and the emails are always a quick read. It’s definitely inspired me in my first year of marriage. Here’s an issue I really appreciated about self soothing. — CD 

I get my LOLs by following the “Only in Asia” twitter feed. They pass along all the weird and crazy stuff from Asia. Clips from Japanese game shows, web cams from China, funniest phone videos from Indonesia. You can’t make this stuff up. — KK

The curiously named blog “Spoon & Tamago” is the best way to keep up with the latest art, design, fads, and lifestyle innovations from Japan. They also offer a nice feature: curated “guides” to Tokyo via interesting long-term residents. Well crafted well-designed site, as might be expected. Add ‘em to your RSS feed. — KK

Most of the email newsletters I subscribe to go unread. Kevin Rose’s “The Journal” is one I always read. Kevin points to interesting science articles (The brain starts to eat itself after chronic sleep deprivation), finds provocative quotes (“Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.“), and reviews products and apps that he finds useful. — MF

I often want to read a long PDF someone sends me on my Kindle. Here is the hack to get it loaded. Use your Kindle account name to create a Kindle email as yourname@free.kindle.com. In the subject line of an email message put < convert >. Enclose the PDF and hit send. Amazon will convert the PDF to their Kindle format and it will show up in your library. Then you can select it to download to your device. The PDF on a Kindle is clunky but readable. — KK

Further refinements on the Kindle hack by two readers:

I was trying to read Ellul’s Propaganda. I downloaded it from archive.org (which is now crucial to my PDF kindle hack, including old Arthur Koestler books and other hard to find titles) Sadly it was 30MB, and the emailed file couldn’t upload. For days I sat there frustrated. Then I realized the hack: I split the PDF into two files of 15MB each and named them Propaganda Part I and Propaganda Part II. Wham, solves it. — Bryan Campen

There is an even easier way to transfer a PDF to Kindle. If you download the Kindle app for Mac or PC you can drag a PDF to the app icon (which I keep in my dock on the Mac). You can configure the app to convert to Kindle format or keep the file as a PDF. You can also choose which of your Kindle /Fire devices you want it sent to. — Len Edgerly (The Kindle Chronicles Podcast)

As you read a Kindle you can, with some effort, highlight a passage. The best way to extract those passages so that you can cut and paste them later, or so you can insert the text into an article, or otherwise use a highlight as text, is to go to this page and login with your Amazon credentials. You’ll see your highlights book by book. There you select texts and copy them. Or on that page use Bookcision, a browser bookmarklet, that will download each book’s passages as a text file. — KK

When you go to Recommend Me a Book you are presented with the first page of a novel, but you are not told the name of the book or the author. If you don’t like what you’ve read, click “Next Book.” If you do like it, click “Reveal Title & Author,” and buy it from Amazon. I wish it let you buy a book without finding out who wrote it, so it was a surprise when it arrived in the mail. — MF

When you go to Recommend Me a Book you are presented with the first page of a novel, but you are not told the name of the book or the author. If you don’t like what you’ve read, click “Next Book.” If you do like it, click “Reveal Title & Author,” and buy it from Amazon. I wish it let you buy a book without finding out who wrote it, so it was a surprise when it arrived in the mail. — MF

I feel like an idiot for not discovering OverDrive sooner. It’s a free mobile app that lets you check out ebooks, audiobooks, and videos from your local public library. To use it, you need a local library card. I got a Los Angeles Library e-card by signing up online and a couple of minutes later I was reading A Burglar’s Guide to the City. — MF

Amazon does a poor job of presenting book series in order. I wanted the chronological order of Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe novels. The website Order of Books had it, along with many other book series. — MF

Before you pick the next book on your reading list you should check out How Long to Read. Their search engine includes more than 12 million books and their speed reading timer will calculate approximately how long it will take you to read the book in its entirety. — CD 

The Library of America publishes high-quality hardbound books with multiple novels per volume. I’m reading Ross Macdonald: Three Novels of the Early 1960s, which contains three excellent novels about fictional Los Angeles detective Lew Archer. These tightly-written page-turners have kept me up way past my bedtime. — MF 

Wikipedia’s “Unusual articles” page has links to hundreds of eclectic and offbeat articles. Learn about the Korean invasion of Normandy, happy numbers, and the Phantom time hypothesis (it’s really 1719, not 2016 as we’ve been led to believe). I’d love this as a multi-volume hardbound illustrated set. — MF 

“New Scientist” is a weekly dose of real science reporting, with broad lay appeal. Of course there is an online version, but I prefer to turn pages and read while I eat my lunch. Either way, it’s the best solid source for new science. — KK

This list of “20 Essential Truths That Women Over 50 Want To Share With Younger Women” seem like no-brainers and things I should already be doing daily, but unfortunately for me, I forget. I made a shorter, more personal version of this list for myself and if I’m ever feeling agitated or unbalanced, I read it again to gain perspective and make everything all better. — CD

A new book I am enjoying is Valley of Genius — an oral history of Silicon Valley. The entire book, compiled by Adam Fisher, is the recollections of those who were there, interrupting each other, as they describe the birth of new technologies. This rollicking, non-stop, geek chorus leaves me with one impression: There was no plan. Each of the achievements of Silicon Valley were unexpected, improbable, and a surprise to those who created it. — KK