Stack: March

This month's delivery – The Ride Journal – was the kind of thing I was expecting from Stack: a really compelling magazine that I would not have bought for myself because it's about a subject I have no interest in. Ostensibly this is a cycling magazine and as I'm the sort of nervous cyclist who can't take her hands of the handlebars I wouldn't have bought a cycling magazine in a hundred years. But The Ride Journal isn't here to tell you what bike to buy, instead its contributors write short pieces about their personal relationship to cycling. There are articles about competing in races and designing bikes, about people met while cycling and strange places cycled across. There's a brilliant pair of articles about bicycle theft called “Thief” and “Taken”. There's a man who writes about the bike rides he made following the death of his infant son and a woman who writes about abandoning cycling as a teenager after a bike ride led her to discover her mother's infidelity. There's a series of photos showing a morning commute through London and another one showing a muddy, cross-country race in Belgium. It's about cycling, whatever that means to its readers and writers.

It looks stunning too; most articles are accompanied by gorgeous illustrations in a huge range of styles. It's even heftier than and it breaks up its uncoated pages with some glossy photographic sections such as the Belgian race photographs. It's beautiful and interesting and I'm really pleased to have received a copy.

Would I buy it again? Not for myself, but I would definitely get this as a gift for a keen cyclist.