First letter.

I keep a shelf. Everyone in publishing keeps a shelf. The difference, in my case, is that I have been talked into keeping it in public — here, on this page, in this register — and I am, the day I write this, only barely reconciled to the idea.

The shelf is not a recommendation. It is a record of attention. What it documents is that for some weeks, or some months, a particular work was on the chair next to me. I read it before sleep, or while waiting, or — occasionally — at the desk where I am supposed to be doing other things. The shelf is the sum of those chairs.

Until this year, my shelf was kept in a notebook, in a brown leatherette cover that does not close because there are too many bookmarks in it. The book in which it is kept was, itself, the first entry on the shelf, eleven years ago. Which seems both circular and correct.

What I’ll do here.

Once a month, roughly, I will write a letter from this shelf about one thing on it. Not a review. A letter. The genre I have in mind is the long postcard a friend sends from a city you have not yet been to — affectionate, specific, slightly overconfident about what the city is for.

I will write only about works I have already returned to. The first time one reads a book is often the worst reading; one is still distracted by the plot. The third or fourth reading is the one in which one notices the wallpaper. These letters will be from the third reading.

Who this is for.

You, if you have come this far. I am not pretending to know how many of you there will be; the editors at Aravien have decided not to put a number on it, which I find restful.

If you write back, I will read every letter. I cannot promise to reply to all of them. I can promise to print the ones that change the way I am reading.

Next month, I want to write about the slow novel — and about the strange relief of being five months into a book and not finished. April.

— M.