Syme's Letter Writer: A guide to modern correspondence
And it mentions stickers!
“I know you'll find this letter strange
That is because I am strange…”
Penpals by Sloan (1994)
Syme's Letter Writer: A Guide to Modern Correspondence About (Almost) Every Imaginable Subject of Daily Life, with Odes to Desktop Ephemera and Selected Letters of Famous Writers by Rachel Syme (Goodreads, Website, Instagram) was released on January 28, 2025.
I had the good fortune to read an Advanced Reader Copy or ARC of this book via Net Galley. (I’m on Goodreads if you want to read all my reviews!)
I love sending and receiving letters! I've been doing it since I was a kid. I'm mostly out of the long letter game these days, but I do send a highly anticipated parody Christmas letter each year and small packages here and there, and always try to zhuzh up the envelope.
This was a very enjoyable read. Lots of great ideas for how to write, what to write, and how to decorate your mail. I liked learning about the different kinds of envelopes. I absolutely loved the illustrations and the beautiful, collaged pictures. Many remind me of the vintage Meyercord decals.
HECK YES:
Getting a sticker subscription. Stickers in general. As someone with a newsletter about stickers and at least one subscription going at a time... I like stickers.
Keeping a box of flats (flat-ish items for including in correspondence) at your desk. I love the idea of calling them flats. I keep items like this in photo album sleeves so I can flip through with ease!
Pressed flowers and leaves. I have to get back into that with my prairie garden.
The idea of onion skin paper. I need to get some.
The actual hard copy of this book comes with fun stationery pages that you can use to write letters, and the intro letter is physically inside an envelope. This is glorious. Girls my age only want one thing, and it's disgusting (Modern day versions of the 1993 Baby-Sitters Club Chain Letter and the 1994 Baby-Sitters Club Secret Santa but non-fiction with goodies in them, aimed at adult millennial women)
Heck yes, with caveats:
Should I get into embossing? Much to think about.
Making bookmarks with a laminator. I love this, but my preference is to laminate my very favourite items only, because I’m worried I will not be able to stop, it's a lot of plastic, and I'm afraid I've used up my lifetime quota. My homemade bookmarks from my son for birthdays/Mother’s Day are amongst my prized possessions.
No thanks but also not deal-breakers:
Attaching things to the outside of envelopes can make it hard to go through the sorting machines at the post office so I would proceed with caution
Don't leave your glue gun on by accident! (One spends a few years on the safety committee at work and leaves forever changed)
Scents (agree with asking before sending scented correspondence)
It's for American audiences so some info will be inaccurate depending on your location (y'all get mail 6 days a week?)
The Advanced Review Copy (ARC) was provided by the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
Previous posts you might be interested in:
I used to be such a great pen pal, but the past few years I have absolutely sucked. I have an upcoming long medical recovery and one of the things on my list to do is to begin again with my pen pals. It is such a joy to receive a piece of mail that isn’t a bill or an advertisement. Thanks for this reminder!
Husband got me one of those personalized embossing stamp things for my books and I haven’t used it yet… seems slightly blasphemous to intentionally permanently mark a page… but I LOVE the idea.