Reading list: work, rest and walking

Every few months I clear out my reading pile and send the best of it to you. This time the pile was all about the same three things: work, rest, and the long walks that sit between them. I've described each one instead of linking, so you can find them in your own library or bookshop.

On work

• A long essay by a furniture maker about building the same chair for twenty years, and why the twentieth is still not finished.

• A short book of letters between two illustrators who never met, about deadlines and doubt.

• A magazine piece on night-shift workers who keep a hobby, which led me to this month's interview.

Rest is not the reward at the end of the work. It is part of the work.

On rest and walking

The walking pieces were my favourites. One is a diary of a woman who walked to work every day for a year and wrote one sentence each morning. Another is a slim guide to city benches, which is exactly as charming as it sounds.

The last is a gentle argument for doing nothing on Sunday afternoons. I tried it for a month. I made more on Monday evenings.

One more thing: I read almost all of these on paper, on the tram or on a bench, phone in my bag. The reading is part of the rest, and it is hard to rest while a screen keeps asking for attention.

I keep a paper list of everything I read, with one line about why it mattered. Going back through it every few months is how these reading lists happen, and it is a surprisingly good way to see what has been on my mind without noticing.

This round, the theme was obvious. I was tired in August, and everything I picked up was secretly about how to rest without feeling guilty about it. The furniture maker's essay was the exception, and also the one I've thought about most since.

His point was that a chair is never really finished, only released. Each version teaches him something he folds into the next one. I found that comforting. It means the thing you make this autumn doesn't have to be the final word. It only has to be this year's chair.

If you'd like a book to start with, pick the letters between the two illustrators. It is short, it reads in an evening, and it makes doubt feel like ordinary weather rather than a verdict.

Next quarter's list will be shaped by your replies. Send me what you're reading, especially the odd and the small.

This week's question: what have you read lately that changed how you spend an evening? Hit reply. I'll collect the answers for a reader's list.

— Ines