I grew up in a house full of magazines. We always had lots of subscriptions—to Time, Entertainment Weekly, and Rolling Stone—and we loved to buy single issues, too. The first two-story Barnes & Noble opened in Pittsburgh at some time in the mid-1990s, with its horizonless rows of magazine stands. Most of what I learned about music (CMJ magazine, with the CD insert) and literature (The Paris Review, The New Criterion) as an adolescent, I learned in those shelves. If you’d asked me what I want...