I can recommend two books, which have reminded me to slow down and savour my crosswords
A little sentence can hold a world.
Four hundred years ago, Joe Moran tells us in First You Write A Sentence, “the average length of a sentence was forty-five words”. By Victorian times, it had fallen to the thirties; “now it is in the twenties”. Moran cites the influence of such things as fragmented advertising copy and tweets, to which I might add slogans, packaging instructions and headlines.
All through the house, colour, verve, improvised treasures in happy but anomalous coexistence.
One morning during the spring after it happened I picked up The New York Times and skipped directly from the front page to the crossword puzzle, a way of starting the day that had become during those months a pattern, the way I had come to read, or more to the point not to read, the paper.
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