Welcome to Litsy!

This is a remarkable collection of essays, or perhaps it‘s better described as diaristic musings. Amina Cain‘s thoughts on writing make me feel seen as a reader. I‘m going to the bookstore today to buy my own copy of this because I don‘t want to live without it.

A good title offers something acute without being obvious, without giving something away.

Reading, all on its own, is one of the best things, and yet isn‘t it nice to read in bed at the end of a long day, the darkness of the window meeting the soft light inside the room? Or on the beach, the hot sand and the sound of the waves coming together with the book. Things combine to become other things, other kinds of experiences.

In The Travelling Companions (1862) by Augustus Leopold Egg […] One girl sleeps while the other reads. Each is resting in her own way. All of us need this kind of rest.

When I began looking at paintings of nighttime scenes because I wanted to write about them, I felt immediately comforted. It‘s probably why I was drawn in the first place to write about darkness, but I wasn‘t expecting to be soothed so quickly.

Pleasure, freedom, torment, emptiness: it is what I want my writing to express.

I have never been able to force myself to write about anything, or to avoid anything for that matter, and I don‘t think I ever will, so I‘ll just see what keeps arising, how I approach the difficulties of being alive in this particular moment in time. It‘s freedom I want when it comes to writing, and in life, even within responsibility. Being unrestrained. Like a horse standing in darkness. The pasture gate has been left open.

Yukon travel adventure + recent reads 01/24/25 #booktube #fibrearts #LGBTQ #audiobooks
https://youtu.be/T7K57KCMncU

A reading memoir that doesn't talk about novels in terms of plot, character or setting but instead spends time on how they evoke plants, painting, darkness, and so on. And how her reading experiences then shape her own writing. I found it quirky and thought-provoking. It helped that many of the works she discusses are by novelists I also like. (Claire-Louise Bennett, Rachel Cusk, Elena Ferrante, Virginia Woolf).