A Good Mail Day

Regular readers of One Minute Zine Reviews will know that I love an excellent mail day – a day when delightful surprises arrive in my postbox. Canadian zinester small ghosts sent me a generous package of creations just before Christmas. Some of these are exquisitely produced mini-zines created from folding and cutting one 8 1/2 X 11 sheet. 

Our Favourite Books : a reading playlist is exactly that – an eclectic list of books which includes dozens of authors (some of my personal favorites are represented here – Joan Didion, Jack Kerouac, Rilke) and seems like a comprehensive season’s worth of literature.  How to Disappear and Live off the Grid shares survival tricks from 1970’s freedom guides (i.e. avoid the law, avoid cops, use aliases, write in code, avoid people). I’m not sure how practical any of this advice is for the very wired 2010s.

Catalogue is an homage to the Whole Earth Catalog with some fun graphics (mystery bones! Stereos!) Found No. 3 features more cool graphics and collages. Sleep Walks is a 45 page thread-bound literary journal which opens with “all works herein remain the sole property of their creators, printed with permission & pleasure, without profit & for sake of joy & soul, glories to you!”

The poems & stories in Sleep Walks are truly hypnotic – some, like “blood on the tracks” “Irene” and “what love is” are among the best writing I have encountered this year. My only complaint is that much of Sleep Walks is almost unreadable --- no, not due to quality, but due to the photo-reduced small print which make this old dude’s eyes tired! All of the above and more titles are available from mail@smallghosts.ca.