With all due respect Deryk Barker, an excellent reviewer of classical music along with many others on this list, I've tired of Fanfare and American Record Guide and have taken a liking to the Penguin Guide. I've always used it, but now more exclusively than in the past. The reason is simple enough: Penguin isn't afraid of calling bald shots in as little amount of space as needed and necessary. It also juxtaposes other recordings of merit for comparison. Too many of the standard classical music periodicals really don't say very much, or if they do, it's more often than not (Vroon always the exception) noncommittal and insecure.Too often there is no comparison with other recordings. I like a robust endorsement that I can measure and use that measure to apply to other recordings. With Penguin, you're dealing with three individuals who work by consensus. With the periodicals one gets certain recordings often measured by the same person (which is good) but more often an ad hoc approach to the whole repertoire. Lastly, the Penguin Guide is more economical, at the expense of not always being the most timely. But with the annual updates, it gives the economically-oriented buyers (like me) a chance to evaluate all the previous year's releases, not only in context to each other, but to the releases from the dawn of CDs. Perhaps it's not as thrilling as waiting for the next issue of Fanfare or ARG, but it's more to the point, more exhaustive, and more economical. Stephen Heersink San Francisco http://home.att.net/~dshsfca/