i buy future music, sound on sound, music tech magazine and digital music maker every month.
£20 goddamn it... but there are usually some cool samples on the cds on some of them.
Although Ive heard peeps slag computer music etc but Ive found as a beginner its really useful to read whatever u can get ur hands on and these are always full of handy bits n pieces + pics of things droolworthy kit u can't afford + general lingo etc
sound-on-sound seems to be the most serious from my exp
<bob katz related remarks here>
yeah im reading katz-masta-b right now as also recommended by someone and its damn good! Theres a lot of waffle about hokey-kokey-3000-kitchen-sink-compress-o-matic's and other strange bits of specialised kit but its chok full of useful theory interwoven with bob's [we're on first name terms

] perspective on stuff - and Ive found its really readable. Yeah as mentioned its about mastering but is pretty much all applicable further upstream/elsewhere.
Frankly I don't see how buying books or magazines is necessary to learn music production.
its not *strictly necessary* but its always nice to have some 'proper' books as against a load of pdf's/web pages - and a noice thing to give someone at the end of the day too! Anyway Ive always a thought speding hard-earned dollars on good books and music really worthwhile compared to tipping it down the drain on other useless pap quite frankly
I also recommend "Sound Design" by David Sonnenschein ... its more about scoring for film n stuff but theres great psychoaccoustics primer material, listening excersices and loads of interesting anecdotes like "We were workin on film x and got this crazy sound effect by sticking a hoover up a badgers bum and then broadcasting it over fm radio whilst twiddling the knobs and licking the aerial" ... well that kinda thing anyway
peace,
marc