I love that good writing can stop me in my tracks. Sometimes I read a sentence so beautiful - a throwaway description, a brutally honest quip, whatever - that I miss my stop on the bus. I forget that the pot is boiling. I let the shower stay running, steam billowing out through an open curtain.
When I find a line that does this to me, I share it, and share generously. I scatter these snippets like salt on an icy pavement, hoping that they might give traction to emotion or impulse in someone else’s mind, too.
I remember reading Sally Rooney’s somewhat maligned Beautiful World, Where Are You a couple of years ago. There’s a moment when two characters with shared history see each other across a room. In Rooney’s words: “They looked at one another for a long moment without moving, without speaking, and in the soil of that look many years were buried.” I remember closing the book and thinking okay, well, that’s in my brain forever now.
One of Rooney’s contemporaries is Colin Barrett, a richly gifted writer from Mayo. I remember reading one of the stories in his debut collection Young Skins, where a character steps out of a pub, and “the breeze had grown teeth.” I couldn’t believe the amount of mental dexterity packed into five words: Barrett took a phrase (the wind having a bite to it, a biting gale) and evolved it to something more artful, more evocative, while also making it more succinct. It felt like reading a new contribution to the English language. I hope he took a few minutes away from the desk afterwards to make a cup of tea and congratulate himself.
I love a good sentence so much that it takes me ages to read books. I like to reread sentences and paragraphs again and again, savouring the sounds, squeezing the teabag against the side of the cup. It’s the same story with films and TV - if there’s a shot I like, or a moment of dialogue that fizzes, I rewind it multiple times. I wake up sometimes and type film scenes into Youtube’s search bar, trying to dislodge something that echoes and clatters in the back storeroom of my mind.
One of the lines that caught me recently wasn’t explicitly artful, but it did catch me off balance and put me flat on my back in a way that I loved. I’m a big fan of The Small Bow, a newsletter for people struggling with addiction written by former Gawker editor AJ Daulerio. He has been through an interesting journey laden with personal troubles and writes with a raw vulnerability that draws you in like an old Tom Waits song.
His piece last week was about a part of his journey in recovery where he learned about the Japanese concept of “mono no aware,” ie. the “pathos of things” or — Daulerio’s favorite description — “the ahhh-ness of things.”
“This is another way the Japanese language manages to capture the feelings of nostalgia we all experience. I recently had a conversation with a friend at a dinner party who pointed out that at one point in your childhood, your parent would have picked you up or lifted you onto their shoulders for the last time —and mono no aware perfectly encapsulates the feeling that thought evokes.”
When my children came home that night, I hugged them all so tightly, like we were all trapped inside a cellar waiting for a tornado to pass.
That sentence, the image of a struggling man holding his children, and the vulnerability to share it with people on the internet. That’s the kind of thing that can stop me in my tracks.
Reading Recs - Jan 2025
It’s My Privilege: Glorious Memoirs by the Very Rich
A look back at a time when the super-wealthy felt they had nothing to lose by letting readers inside their gilded corridors
by Molly Young in The New York Times
I loved this piece about autobiographies written by the hilariously wealthy. It had a couple of bits that made me laugh out loud and reminded me of something very important - reading is supposed to be fun.
Profile: Molly Young, Writer
by Into The Gloss
I really enjoyed the rec linked above, so looked into Molly Young’s back catalogue and found a whole slew of interesting pieces: features, essays, zines, and much more. But this was my favourite - a short profile where she discusses her process as a writer that reads voraciously. I thought it contained a lot of gems, like:
“Writing is also one of those things that requires a lot of self-discipline because you have understand what conditions allow you to work well so you can create those conditions for yourself. That takes a lot of self-awareness.”
and:
“…my best advice for writers is to read a lot, specifically things that you like. I think writers need to trust their tastes and not read things that they feel they should read or should have read. You can only be influenced by what you remember and therefore what you enjoy, so read things you enjoy and will be influenced by.”
Again, reading = fun is the goal here. I’m one of those people that buys a lot of the ‘great’ books, which obviously look wonderful on my shelf and make me seem very worthy. But I’ve abandoned more of these than I’ve finished. Slowly but surely I’m getting better at reading what I enjoy, which means I’m reading more.
The Clancy Kid
by Colin Barrett in Young Skins
Because this short story doesn’t just contain One Good Sentence. It contains an awful lot of them. Take ten minutes and get lost in another world.
That’s all folks - let me know if you enjoyed the read (you can tap the ‘like’ button, reply to this mail or comment below) and if you know someone who would enjoy - just forward this mail.