• Good newsletters

MAKE YOUR INBOX A BIT MORE JOYFUL WITH ONE OF THE NEW BREED OF NEWSLETTERS: WRITING THAT MOVES, INFORMS AND INSPIRES, THAT YOU DEFINITELY WON’T WANT TO LEAVE UNREAD

More email? Groan. If you spend your work days battling it, the thought of signing up for more will likely fill you with dread. However, it’s different if you brighten up your inbox with things you actually want to read. Our favourite newsletters provide a window onto personal passions, feelings and thoughts, like a well crafted letter from a friend.

As Susannah Otter, author of the Otter’s Jotter newsletter (tinyletter.com/OttersJotter) says, they “take you somewhere else and make you think slightly differently”. Or, as author Sophie Mackintosh, who pens Gastro del Solo (tinyletter.com/gastrodelsolo) puts it, “The magical thing about them is they are these small nuggets of beauty in your inbox, an essay that feels like a present written just for you.” Here are a few hand-picked favourites, spanning books, beauty, homes and brain food. And definitely no spam.

Life and style

Domestic Sluttery sends out an email on a different theme each day, from inspiring women to a dangerous-foryour-wallet weekly sales round-up (domesticsluttery.com). “It always makes me smile,” says Susannah. If the Domestic Sluttery writers are like your knowledgeable best friends,

A Little Bird (a-littlebird.com) is like the sophisticated aunt with guaranteed recommendations on exhibitions, cookbooks, restaurants, makers and the like. Likewise, Iris (irisletter.com) is written by a team, each with a different expertise and responsibility for recommending a book, recipe, travel destination and more each month. Laura Brown – one half of the Domestic Sluttery team – enjoys the Betty newsletter (bettymagazine.co.uk), written by Charlotte Jacklin, “because she has a downright lovely outlook on life and impeccable taste to boot”.

Recomendo (recomendo.com) is a zippy weekly list of things loved by their team. Podcasts, books, products or tech hacks – you won’t know what each email will contain, but it always has something to reward your time.

Random knowledge

Quartz compiles an intelligent daily news round-up (qz.com) but it’s the

Quartz Obsession that really is for those who love facts and stats (qz. com/newsletters/quartz-obsession). It’s a daily dive into something you’re likely to have overlooked, on topics as varied as queuing, sneezing and graph paper. Laura Olin is an American digital guru and her missive (lauraolin.com/newsletter) lists some of the internet’s most lovely and/or meaningful things each Thursday. Along similar lines, Laura Brown also recommends Lunch Hour Links (tinyletter.com/lunchhourlinks), “a round-up of links to really interesting things around the internet. It’s always full of stuff I wouldn’t come across elsewhere”. Meanwhile, the weekly Storythings newsletter (storythings.com) contains 10 great stories from around the world, intended to teach something new.

Food

Sophie Mackintosh’s Gastro del Solo is about the act of eating alone (tinyletter.com/gastrodelsolo). She recommends Women Cook for Me (tinyletter.com/womencookforme) by photographer Sophie Davidson – “beautiful photographs of food, essays on food by women I admire, what could be better?”, as well as

A Kitchen of One’s Own by Liv Griffiths (tinyletter.com/livlizlou), a tinyletter “about food, books and life”. Our Wishlist editor Louise Gorrod enjoys Sophie Dahl’s At the Kitchen

Table (atthekitchentable.com), about eating, gathering and much more besides.

Personal stories

Rather than writing a blogpost, tinyletter (a newsletter service run by MailChimp) is often used to share personal stories and scenes from everyday life, providing a refreshing pause for thought in your inbox. Worth signing up for are Jean Hannah

Edelstein’s Thread (bit.ly/jhethread) (fans of her writing will be thrilled to know her memoir, This Really Isn’t About You, is just out from Picador),

Natasha Lunn’s Conversations on Love (tinyletter.com/Conversations_ on_Love), a series of interviews exploring the idea of love in all its forms, while our contributor Lia Leendertz loves Katherine May’s newsletter (katherine-may.co.uk), focusing on mental health and autism. Lia says, “It’s always really interesting and entertaining.” Last but not least, Lenny Letter (lennyletter.com) is the brainchild of Lena Dunham, who created the TV show Girls, and features a range of personal stories from contributors around the world.

Creative work

Maria Popova’s Brainpickings (brainpickings.org) has been making Sundays more inspiring since 2006. She uses lessons from writers, artists and thinkers to tease out lessons on, in her own words, “how to live and what it means to lead a good life”. The

Painter’s Keys (painterskeys.com) is a similarly delightful insight into artists’ routines and passions, while Black Cardigan Edit (blackcardiganedit.com) is a great snapshot of “advice and enthusiasms related to writing, books, and creativity”. The weekly digests from It’s Nice That (itsnicethat.com) and

Creative Boom (creativeboom.com) share wonderful art and design work from around the world. While DO (thedolectures.com/newsletter1) is a “curation of wonder and optimism”.

Homes and gardens

For insight into windowsill gardening, try Noughticulture by Alice Vincent (tinyletter.com/noughticulture), while Lia Leendertz recommends Laetitia

Maklouf (laetitiamaklouf.com) on “five-minute gardening” and Otter

Farm (otterfarm.co.uk) by Mark Diacono. Farrow & Ball’s Chromologist (thechromologist.com) has colourful homes content and Neptune’s newsletter (neptune.com), includes interior inspiration along with delicious recipes.

Books

One joy of a book club is discovering books that you might not otherwise. Glory Edim set up Well-Read Black

Girl (wellreadblackgirl.com) to increase the visibility of black women writers. Sign up to the newsletter and you are part of their book club – join in the discussions or just enjoy the recommendations. Two tinyletters written by women who work in publishing will undoubtedly introduce you to something new to read: the aforementioned Otter’s

Jotter (tinyletter.com/OttersJotter) by Susannah Otter brings book recommendations every fortnight or so, while Beauty by the Book (tinyletter.com/OfBooksandBeauty) by Melissa Cox does a marvellous service of linking books with beauty recommendations. Could your lunch hour be a bit more poetic? Then surely Lunchtime Poetry (tinyletter. com/lunchtimepoetry) is the answer? Our contributor Terri-Jane Dow also sends out her favourite poems via

Ache (tinyletter.com/ache).