The pleasures of snail mail …

… A Woman of Letters – Notes on Books. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

One of the interesting things about having a number of pen-pals is seeing how varied the friendships are. Some folks write letters that are very in-the-moment: They’ll tell me where they’re sitting as they write, what they’ve been thinking about that day, what they plan to do after lunch. Those people tend to write shorter letters, more often. Others use letters—or their letters to me, at least—as a space where they can share really intimate things. These letters can be pages and pages long, and their writers don’t usually send them too often. The first type of letter is wonderful because it’s like having one conversation that goes on for months or years. The second type is wonderful because it’s like reading something more literary: a personal essay or an excerpt from a diary, only it was written just for me. A readership of one.