A long and intimate relationship with reading has taught acclaimed writer Tegan Bennett Daylight that - in life as in books - the delight is in the details.

Tegan Bennett Daylight has led a life in books – as a writer, a teacher and a critic, but first and foremost as a reader. Reading has been her inspiration and solace, her recreation and profession, her poison and her medicine.

In this deeply intimate and insightful work, Daylight describes how her rich storehouse of reading has nourished her life, and how her life informs her reading. In both, she shows us that it’s the small points of connection – the details - that really matter: what we see when someone close to us dies, when we give birth, when we fall in love, when we make friends. The details are what we can share and compare and carry with us.

Daylight writes with invigorating candour and compassion about her mother’s last days; her own experiences of childbearing and its aftermath (in her celebrated essay ‘Vagina’); her long admiration of Helen Garner and George Saunders; and her great loves and friendships. Each chapter is a revelation, and a celebration of how books offer not an escape from ‘real life’ but a richer engagement with the business of living.

The result is a work that will truly deepen your relationship with books, and with other readers. The delight is in the details.