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Hey everybody, it's Mariel.

There is a scene in the Jane Austen novel Pride and Prejudice where the main character, Lizzie Bennett, receives a letter from her,

will they, won't they, hate you, love you, sexy crush man, Mr. Darcy.

He actually hands it to her in person.

It's really dramatic.

And when I tell you, the anticipation I felt as she opened the envelope,

the way I got butterflies in my stomach the first time I read this letter, I felt like I was her.

That obviously says a lot about the immersive magic of a good book, but also about the potency

of a well-written letter.

The drama, the intrigue, the focused attention that it drums up in the recipient.

Rachel Syme and I are kindred spirits in this way. I loved reading like novels that turned on a

letter. I loved, you know, watching You've Got Mail and the shop around the corner and all these

sort of films about correspondence and reading Jane Austen novels.

You know, I just loved the idea of letter writing.

Rachel is a writer for the New Yorker, and she just published a beautiful book called Syme's Letter Writer.

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