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Anna Chapman Parker is an artist who thinks deeply about incidental moments. This wonderful book charts a year in her life where she draws weeds that she finds on her wanders. It features both her writing and her drawings, and also some other artworks as references.

Parker writes about what she draws beautifully, about her days and her time with her family. She also weaves in observations on art history, writing and culture that show a deep and acute understanding of her craft.

The drawings are wonderful, the anecdotes thoughtful. Although I am not generally a fan of the diary form of writing, this book masters it, moving easily from anecdote to theory to humour, treating each day as unique. The quality of writing helps this. The end result is a joy to read and one I will revisit again and again.

This collection of essays by Sinéad Gleeson is deeply honest and opens her up in a way that I admire. Not many people will write about their lives, their grief, their abilities and their personalities with so much openness. Any collection of essays will have stronger and weaker moments, and some of these are wonderful but the prose didn't catch me for many.

Where I felt the writing was strongest was always when Gleeson was describing artworks. In these moments, they had a powerful sentiment and a clear love of the objects and ideas in art. The writing there is the most brilliant, and the most standout unique. In other moments, the more hurtful or difficult, the writing also becomes a little laboured, reflecting the themes but also making it harder to move through. While the book is admirably honest, the moments of joy popped out particularly for me.

This collection of poems by Longley has moments of beauty, particularly in the very short poems, which offer moments of beauty in succinct form. I am not really too knowledgeable on poetry, so am hesitant to write too much more.

This was referenced in Deb Chachra's book 'How Infrastructure Works' and it sounded like it would present some ideas on economics that are new to me, so I got it out of the library.

@niamhgarvey@mastodon.ie no doubt I will. Your introduction alone is a treat.

I pre-ordered this collection of essays after seeing the editor @niamhgarvey@mastodon.ie post about it on Mastodon. I got it a couple of weeks ago in the post and am freeing up some time to read it now.

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I balk at some of the things Zinsser writes in this book about other humans, but this observation on the innocence of lice and rats in the spread of disease is very important and a credit to him.

Quote breaks at [->] and page 128 is a full-page reproduction of a 6th Century illustration of a bramble, which is why the reference skips from p127 to p129

@loppear Thanks! I opened Moby Dick in a bookshop the other day and read a couple of pages, and I was hooked (excuse the pun). I love the wry prose in these short stories already.