A review by hellojoie
Letters of Note: An Eclectic Collection of Correspondence Deserving of a Wider Audience by Shaun Usher

4.0

Honestly, this book (and the blog it comes from) is simply breathtaking. Reading letters is something I've come to appreciate more the older I get, and this collection is a beautifully diverse curation of the humorous, the weird, the loving, and the heartbreaking (sometimes all in one letter). As noted in the book's introduction, the dates of these letters spans from the 14th century BC up until the 21st century (albeit with quite a bit of skew toward the 19th and 20th centuries). I think one of my favorite things about this book was how universal certain themes are. I mean, here are writings than span literally more than a millennium, and yet there's still so many commonalities between so many seemingly dissimilar people.

For me, this wasn't the kind of book I could devour in one sitting - it was difficult to read more than a few letters at a time and not feel the weight of it. Like traveling in a time machine, or trying on another person's life for the briefest moment! In a way, it's exhausting - but also thrilling, and something I wanted to savor. In all honesty, by the time I've now finished (two months after starting it, whoops), I've forgotten many of the letters that early on left me thinking, "Oh, I have to remember to mention THIS one in my review!" I'm actually kind of pleased about that, because I can look forward to being surprised by them again next time I read through this.