five top things i love

here's an 'eclectic letters' piece i wrote this week

Instead of publishing a ‘five top things I’ve been reading’ post today, as I promised I’d do every Sunday, I’ll try to persuade you to read something I wrote this week for my friend Kit Wilson’s cool new Substack, Eclectic Letters. In each edition of Eclectic Letters, ‘a different guest picks and writes about one or more cultural artefacts they find particularly interesting, but which might not be well known to other readers’.¹

I’m directing you to my edition of Eclectic Letters partly because I enjoyed writing it, partly because it happens to be in five parts,² and partly because I think the project, which Kit started earlier this year, deserves attention.

Here it is:

Eclectic Letters #5 — Rebecca Lowe

And here’s a TLDR:

• Chet Baker’s Cools Out makes me feel as cool as a bad-boy guy from a fifties novel

• Reiner Knizia’s non-board ‘board games’ can provide consolation as well as fun and challenge

• Ten Minutes by Tractor’s Pinot Noir will remain my favourite wine until I become a ‘good’ taster

• Is anyone’s philosophy better at combining smartness, sincerity, and rigour than Judith Jarvis Thomson’s?

• The California Zephyr is a route into America

1. https://eclecticletters.substack.com/about

2. I wanted to add a sixth part, in which I talked about Alonso Lobo’s Versa est in luctum, but I decided not to: it’s so good that I couldn’t find the right words. I’ll try again some time.