He died on Christmas Eve, and I never got the chance to say goodbye. My grandpa’s death is still so painful to me – even though it’s been a couple of years now. My favourite letter is Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s letter to his grandma, when his grandpa died. For such a short book, it made me feel so much! I read words of sympathy, empathy, love and joy. Through the 31 letters, I felt different people’s sadness of losing someone. It also gave me a bit of comfort, an unexpected hug, one of those that you didn’t know you needed. Now, looking back, I am grateful I have read this book, as it allowed me to get closer to my grief and feel emotions I deliberately refused to feel. I thought to myself – “another book that is sad”.

When I signed up for the readalong, I didn’t know which topic I will get, and when I got grief, I was a bit let down. Now it is a collection of the world’s most inspiring, compulsive and powerful letters, curated into different books based on their topic. Letters of Note started as a website where Shaun Usher was sharing people’s letters. Huge thank you to the team at Tandem as well as the publisher Canongate Books for sending me a copy of the book to read and review! I am so grateful that I had the opportunity to participate on the readalong for Letters of Note: Grief. Wishlist | Blog | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram | Ko-fi In this volume, Shaun Usher turns to the theme of grief. Now, the curator of Letters of Note, Shaun Usher, gives us wonderful new volumes featuring letters organized around a universal theme. From Virginia Woolf's heartbreaking suicide letter, to Queen Elizabeth II's recipe for drop scones sent to President Eisenhower from the first recorded use of the expression 'OMG' in a letter to Winston Churchill, to Gandhi's appeal for calm to Hitler and from Iggy Pop's beautiful letter of advice to a troubled young fan, to Leonardo da Vinci's remarkable job application letter.

The first volume in the bestselling Letters of Note series was a collection of hundreds of the world's most entertaining, inspiring, and unusual letters, based on the seismically popular website of the same name-an online museum of correspondence visited by over 70 million people. An immensely moving collection of letters on the theme of Grief, curated by the founder of the globally popular Letters of Note website.

Letters of Note by Shaun Usher