What I’m reading: Write Back Soon! Adventures in Letter Writing

I seem to spend a lot of time using a keyboard and not so much time picking up an old fashioned pen and paper these days. I often slip in a hand written note with a swap package but that’s about it. Which is why I was interested in Write Back Soon! Adventures in Letter Writing by Karen Benke.

Connect to your friends through handwritten notes, cards, letters, and postcards—an interactive workbook that encourages creative interactions between friends through the written word, complete with cross-outs, smudges, and parenthetical asides.

Put down that smartphone and pick up a pen! Texting and e-mail have taken over our correspondence, but Karen Benke is ready to change that. Through prompts that invite penning short postcard-size notes, ideas for sending cards “just because,” and inspired letter-writing exercises, Pass That Note! offers limitless possibilities for connecting with your friends in more personal, unique, and creative ways. Use the book for its letter-writing ideas, tear out pages to send to friends, or write in it as a journal to record big ideas for future correspondence. No matter how you use it, you’ll be connecting with the people you care about the most in ways that are surprising, fun, and heartfelt.

Contributors include: Neil Gaiman, Jon J Muth, Ruth Ozeki, Wendy Mass, Gary Snyder, Norman Fischer, Natalie Goldberg, Jane Hirshfield, Claire Dederer, Albert Flynn DeSilver, Alison Luterman, Sam Hamill, Ava Dellaira, Lucille Lang Day, and J. Ruth Gendler.

This is a really fun book to read. I received an electronic copy through NetGalley to review and I think this is one occasion where a paper copy would be better to read. As I was reading the book there were lots of time when I wanted to make notes which you just can’t do with an electronic version!

If you want to pick up a pen and write a note to a friend, leave a letter in your child’s lunch box or just want to spend more time using some of that pretty stationary you bought – this book is for you.

Write Back Soon! Adventures in Letter Writing by Karen Benke is published by Roost Books on 22nd September 2015. Thank you to NetGalley for providing me with a copy to review.