GOODBYE, AGAIN

A Canadian writer and illustrator transforms his perceptions of the everyday in his own life into a series of highly personal reflections.

Sun—who holds a master’s degree in architecture from Yale, is a doctoral candidate in urban planning at MIT, and wrote for the sixth season of the Netflix series BoJack Horseman—took three years from a ferociously busy schedule to turn inward and scrutinize “every thought that passed me by.” Though he was supposed to be resting, rather than simply let his mind “meander,” he decided to document everything that passed through his mind: “Otherwise, I told myself, all this break-taking, this intentionally unproductive time, would not be ‘worth it.’ ” Sun opens with an essay about his failure to notice features about an apartment where he once lived—e.g., where a power outlet was located. The topic appears mundane, but it is ultimately symptomatic of what consumed Sun’s attention and left him “burned out”: work. In several essays, the author describes work as his antidote “to…nothingness and emptiness.” Later in the book, Sun muses on the guilt that fuels his work ethic, observing that he wouldn’t get anything done without it. His “go slow” approach—which he admires in parents who “linger at restaurants”—manifests in essays about lessons in observation and the natural world learned from houseplants. In “How To Cook Scrambled Eggs,” for example, Sun transforms several egg recipes into an homage to his parents and the family memories each recipe allows him to rediscover and savor. Illustrated throughout with simple line drawings, this quirky book offers insight into the workings of an exceptionally busy, productive mind as well as the price of living in a hypercompetitive society where “we are all burned out and don’t have enough time” and it’s important to “steal moments away from yourself whenever you can.”

A quietly provocative collection.