Dedicated readers of the GIY Guide have already encountered our infatuation with all things ‘zine. From the informational to the confessional to the purely recreational, zines touch on as wide a variety of topics as any more expensive media format, and their very affordability makes them accessible to almost anyone, both to make and to read. A good place to find (and share) them is at Zine Fest, an annual celebration and showcase of that most independent of publishing arms, found in many major US cities. And since San Francisco’s Zine Fest just passed through a week ago, the GIY Guide’s got a few new plugs.

Dwelling Portably, by Burt and Holly Davis, vols 1-3. More great DIY dosage courtesy of Microcosm Publishing, who’ve helped compile a whopping thirty years worth of hand-typed, hard-won knowledge of life on the road originally published as Message Post. How to hop a freight train, how to build a solar cooker, how to keep mobile chickens, and how to build a yurt are some of the back-to-basics, practical tips you’ll find here, shared by the Davises as well as by their loyal readers (and fellow portable dwellers). Forget the cupboard of canned soup and those survivalist scare pamphlets—when the big upheaval hits, Dwelling Portably is the resource you’ll want to have by your side.

The F-Word: The Outlaws Issue (PM Press). Ok, it was published last summer, but this third issue of the F-Word, “a Feminist Handbook for the Revolution,” is timeless. Edited by Melody Berger, the outlaws issue wrangles reproductive rights and political activists, gender-transgressives, sex workers, cartoonists, reviewers, and Howard Zinn to discuss their personal definitions of “outlaw” feminism. A feisty, fresh outlook on an ongoing concern.

Specious Species #3, ed. Joe Donohoe. I admit, I picked this up not at Zine Fest, but at my friendly neighborhood bookstore later in the day. So new the website hasn’t been updated to include it, Specious Species #3 carries on the precedent set by issues #1 and #2: good, solid conversational interviews with an eclectic grab bag of iconoclastic visionaries including Spain Rodriguez, Will Franken, Michelle Tea, and Thomas Frank. All people who, as Donohoe puts it, “make an effort”—for readers who are willing to do the same.