54.1. Some Very Good Writing
Collections of sentences that inspired me this year
In case it isn’t clear to you by now, I’m a big huge nerd about writing.
Every day I scroll and I scroll through mountains of mediocre sentences, on the hunt for some assemblage of words that makes me remember why I love writing, reading. I’m looking for that can’t-put-it-down feeling. I’m looking for writing that forces my brain to try to figure out how the piece was put together. That’s a compulsive thing I do: read a novel and try to figure out where the idea started, what the first paragraph the author wrote was. I read an article I love, and I find myself deconstructing how the person found the facts they did.
Last summer, I shared with you my response to the much-discussed New York Times book list, and it turns out some of you really liked my recommendations.1
On this Winter Solstice — otherwise known as Peak Reading Season — I’ve decided to slap together a list of some of my favorite essays and journalism I’ve read this year. It skews Northwest-centric. This isn’t an exhaustive list of everything read — likely if something isn’t on this list, I probably told you about it in a previous newsletter. It’s just a list.
Not only are these pieces of writing great reads, they’re the stuff that made me get up off the couch, sit my ass at the computer and start writing.