Last I checked, I have about a dozen or so subscriptions to various print and online publications. The problem is finding the time to devote to a careful (and carefree, as in unhurried) reading of each one of these great magazines and newspapers.

The other day I had a very leisurely lunch at one of my favorite regular lunchtime haunts, the Aladdin’s in Independence on Rockside Road. With the November issue of “The Atlantic” as my sole companion, I read through four articles and learned about, among other things, former NBA star Kevin Johnson’s run for mayor of Sacramento, the finer points of visiting a Japanese “onsen”, or hot springs, and a bitter Italian liqueur called Fernet Branca. (Read the entire article here.)

Aside from the fact that I learned something new from each one of these articles, I got a distinct pleasure from reading such finely crafted sentences as this one, where author Wayne Curtis describes a walk through the storage room filled with the herbs, roots, and spices that go into making Fernet Branca:

To walk through the room is to reconnoiter a peculiar olfactory geography, crossing from the republic of one aroma into another, with the borderlands between the two sometimes under detente, but often not.

As a writer, I know how much work goes into making a good sentence. So any time I encounter such writing, I’m especially thankful for the intellectual thrill it delivers.