Pleasure lists

and opening lines...

Phantom Thread

To close out the year, I wrote a short pleasure list, inspired by @thepleasurelist on Instagram and Bertolt Brecht.

Fresh air 

Crisp linens

Hot showers

A bowl of cut fruit

The first sip of coffee

Chopin’s Ballade No.1 in G minor

The last page of a good book

Handwritten letters

Lunch poems

Late sunsets

Kissing 

What’s your pleasure?

Because the new year is upon us, I have been thinking of opening sentences, opening lines — the importance of a first impression, literary or otherwise! Below are some favorites I have collected or been recommended to me (directly & indirectly) by people whose literary tastes I adore:

Elizabeth Hardwick, Sleepless Nights

• It is June. This is what I have decided to do with my life just now.

Frank O’Hara, “For Grace, After a Party” (Daisy Alioto in Dirt’s Nightlife Review)

• You do not always know what I am feeling

Julia May Jones, Vladimir (recommended by Akosua T. Adasi)

• When I was a child, I loved old men, and I could tell that they also loved me.

Louise Gluck, “Averno”

• You die when your spirit dies. / Otherwise, you live.

Simone Weil, “Human Personality” (Siri Hustvedt on The Point Magazine podcast)

• “You do not interest me.” No man can say these words to another without committing a cruelty and offending against justice. 

Greg Jackson, “Wagner in the Desert” (Sophie Kemp on Twitter)

• “First, we did molly, lay on the thick carpet, touching it, ourselves, one another.”

Last year, The Millions invited me to summarize my reading year in review. I did not have time to make a comprehensive end-of-year list, but I’ll list some titles that stuck with me…