The slow ordinary: ‘boring fiction’
I stole this title from a comment on Where Is the Cool’s Substack about the restorative mediation of washing up (and Helene Appel’s paintings in particular).
My new year’s resolution is to go to bed early and use that last hour to read a physical book, not scroll ‘one last time’ on the phone. So far, it’s working OK (I’m hitting the pillow at 1am, rather than 2am – baby steps!). The trick for me is to choose what I’m calling ‘boring fiction’, although I’m sure there must be a more BookTok-friendly ‘core’ name for it. It’s in the vein of Sally Rooney’s Normal People and John Williams’ Stoner and I’ve found it most recently in Brian by Jeremy Cooper, Perfection by Vincenzo Latronico and the short story, So Late in the Day by Claire Keegan (above). (more…)
