Reads
Books worth slowing down for. Reviews, recommendations and reading notes from Slow Pleasure.
Essays & Long Reads
The Case for Reading Slowly
We have not stopped reading. What we have stopped doing is reading deeply , with patience, with full attention, without a screen glowing nearby. And the cost of that, it turns out, is considerable.
The Essay as Attempt
From Montaigne’s tentative self-inquiries in 1580 to Maggie Nelson’s autotheory, a history of the most honest form in literature, and why the essay is thriving now more than ever.
Currently Reading
The Bloody Chamber – Angela Carter
Ten stories that reimagine fairy tales from the inside out. Carter writes with savage beauty, wolf pelts and silk, desire and danger, women who refuse the ending they’re given.
How to Listen to Jazz – Ted Gioia
A masterclass in active listening from one of music’s finest writers. Gioia strips jazz back to its essentials: rhythm, improvisation, the space between notes, and teaches you to hear what you’ve been missing.
In Memory of Memory – Maria Stepanova
A hypnotic meditation on family, time and forgetting. One of the great European novels of the last decade.
The Bed of Procrustes – Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Aphorisms sharp enough to draw blood. Taleb distils his philosophy into single sentences that linger for days, on risk, modernity, knowledge, and the things we pretend to understand.
The Importance of Living – Lin Yutang
A Chinese philosopher’s love letter to idleness, pleasure and the art of doing nothing well. Written in 1937 and still the most persuasive argument for slowing down you’ll ever read.