Which did you like better: The Watchtower or Awake? ...and why?

by JimmyPage 21 Replies latest jw friends

  • Band on the Run
    Band on the Run

    The
    Awake by a long shot. The WT was about spooky numbers, esoteric stuff. Extremely preachy. Awake remind me a bit of National Geographic. My family was rah rah National Geographic. Bare breasted women were acceptable in National Geographic. Awake would write about someting generally, only the last few paragraphs would have the JW rant.

    Does anyone know the purpose of Awake? Of course, it was vaguely similar to Natil Geo. or Readers' Digest. I was starved for any reading material. Believe it or not, the pseuo historical stuff gave me an advantage over classmates. We were working poor. No one had literature at home.

    In fairness to my mom, we were enrolleld in preschool library school and heard story tellers, played games, sang songs, and even did a maypole dance. We looked like Buffy and Jodie at library school. I adored library school so I cried so hard to go to normal school. My mom enrolled me in a special teaching kindergarten at a teachers' college. It was around Brown v. Board of Education. They were messing with my mind. It was integrated. There were white dolls and black dolls. Sometimes the white dolls were awol. I would debate whether to play with a black doll for the longes time and ultimately, refuse. We brought home four to five books per day. Curious George and Mike Mullgan and his steam shovel knocked out much Witness doctrine. Oh, the teachers college preschool served us milk and good cookie. The milk was served in a glass pitcher with real glasses. Education was all down hill until college.

  • Knowsnothing
    Knowsnothing
    I liked the Awake better. I immediately went to the back and read Observing the World, and questions from readers. -Nomad Soul

    Ditto.

  • agent zero
    agent zero

    my favorite in order:

    1. Awake's Observing the World - read the most like snippets from a newspaper, a quick read that actually interested me.

    2. WatchTower - then because it felt like it had much greater importance and relevance. now, for finding theological absurdities and rolling my eyes at the overt stupidity.

    3. The rest of the Awake! - sometimes the subjects are interesting, sometimes not, but if i want to read about nature or history etc, i'd rather read about it in something like National Geo. and get quadruple the information about it, and forego sentences like "isn't that a marvellous creation?".

  • jws
    jws

    Awake! definitely. The articles were more about the world, nature, etc. Not this month's interpretation of the book of Revelation like the Watchtower. Granted, they weren't too deep or scientific. But, given the choice of either of those or even other books, I'd take the Awake!

  • leavingwt
    leavingwt

    I rarely ever read the WT. I would skim the Awake! for an interesting bit, here and there.

  • St George of England
    St George of England

    As a teenager I could scan enough of both magazines in 10 minutes flat, just to get by.

    Then it was down to an evenings careful study of MotorCycle News.

    George

  • ziddina
    ziddina

    The "Awake" magazine because they plagiarized the articles from legitimate news and science magazines like National Geographic, Smithsonian, Life, and so on - which meant that one actually got to read some scientific FACTS, once in a while...

    I couldn't stand the Watchtower magazines... Only read them when I had to...

  • blondie
    blondie

    I always looked for articles that gave a glimmer of what the WTS was thinking re doctrine/policy that would affect me. A few articles in the 80's re child abuse jumped out at me in the Awake. But overall, the Awake is a snore and I learned more from watching shows on PBS or Discovery or science magazines. And in the WT the QFR and side articles were more revealing as to the inner workings. I would call on people in my university town that would laugh at the watered down version of the Awake, designed for 5th graders.

  • moshe
    moshe

    Asking that question is like asking what poison do you like better- cyanide or strychnine?

  • Magwitch
    Magwitch

    I equally read both magazines - how else was I supposed to get my outstanding college education?

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