This post is inspired by a post by my friend Stefanie. She mentioned renewing her subscription to Runner’s World, which made me realize that I do not have a single magazine subscription. Back in high school and for the first year of college I subscribed to Newsweek. Probably an unusual magazine for a teenager to read, but I read it to improve my English. Learning about politics and economics was a nice side effect, though.
When I lived in the US and for the year after that, I had a subscription for Cosmopolitan. In 2006, I let it expire and never renewed it. I don’t think I have ever subscribed to a German magazine. Frankly, that is because German magazines are almost as expensive when you subscribe as when you buy them in a store, so there is no incentive to pay for a one year subscription, when I can just buy it in the store when I actually want to read it and pay the same price.
US magazines are so much cheaper to subscribe to, even when you live abroad. Currently, a subscription to US Cosmopolitan is $45 a year. If you buy the US Cosmopolitan in a German store (station book stalls usually have international magazines) you pay around €10, nearly $14, for an issue. No offense but I’d rather buy a paperback book or two for that money!
I have often considered renewing my Cosmopolitan subscription. It seems they recycle the same articles in every issue, but it’s such a guilty pleasure too. At the price they charge at German stores, buying it occasionally is not an option for me, unfortunately.
But then I had the idea that it might make more sense to subscribe to a healthy living magazine. It would definitely make for more interesting and informative reading and it would tie in with my efforts to change my lifestyle. It would give me another source of information and it’d definitely be a better use of my money.
This is where you come in: do you ready any health magazines, such as Health, Women’s Health, Shape, Runner’s World? If so, would you recommend them? What is it you like / don’t like about them? And if you read any other interesting magazines, feel free to recommend them too!