I really love Sophie’s newsletter You Are Doing A Good Enough Job, which was both the inspiration for Kaijuville and its original launch vehicle. I love Erin’s newsletter The Old Shoebox; I aspire to the kind of enthusiasm and joy she brings to her deep dives there. I read every issue of Escape The Algorithm, and while I wish they were more frequent, I also like the way Elan Ullendorff publishes it only when moved to do so.
Conversely, I depend on the clockwork cadence of reading Numlock News every morning. I’m excited about the newness of Garden Variety (Eleanor Davis AND Jillian Tamaki?!), I am moved by the thoughtfulness of A Poem Miasma, and I am appetized by the imagination of 400 Flavours.
I really believe you should subscribe to all of the above newsletters. They are the best, and they are always worth your time and attention.
But the perfect email newsletter is 31 Days of Halloween.
The creator, Laura E. Hall, is an old friend. But even if I didn’t know her as a thoughtful, generous, brilliant designer and writer, I would still insist that her annual email popup is a perfect choice for your October inbox.
That’s not because it is urgent, bracing, revelatory, or galvanizing. It may not even be relevant to your experience of seasonal change, if you live within or south of the Tropic of Cancer. 31 Days of Halloween, and yes I’m linking it again, I really want you to click on it, offers only a few things:
- A duration of 31 days
- Spookiness + spoopiness
- Brevity and charm
And you can’t even really count the first one. Laura sends out a bonus issue on the first day of November. Nevertheless! There is a perfection to this approach that has only grown clearer with each of the newsletter’s twelve years so far.
There are so few uncomplicated joys in the mess of our present digital world. 31 Days of Halloween gives you a couple of minutes of delight, once an evening—a little art, an interesting link, a question you can answer—for one little slice of your year. You can share it with a kid in your life, or forward it to a parent. And then, when its time is up, the newsletter bids an affectionate farewell just so fans like me can look forward to its return.
I’m trying to rush out this post so that you will maybe read it before Laura sends out this year’s second missive.1 That means you can read the first entry for 2026 right now, yes now, don’t even finish reading this sentence until you click the link, did you do it, okay I’m trusting you on this, and when you scroll to the bottom of that page you can click the thingy to subscribe yourself. Then (because of November 1, remember), you’ll get exactly 31 issues of the perfect email newsletter to lift your spirits. I said lift your spirits.
I sure could use it. I bet we both could, this year and (if we’re lucky) next year too. That’s all from Kaijuville. Let’s get spooped on today!
- AH CRAP SHE JUST BEAT ME, POINT STANDS ↩︎
