I read “100 Years: Wisdom From Famous Writers on Every Year of Your Life.” It’s more of an experience than a story. An experience so familiar yet distant, so eerie yet comforting, so relatable yet alien.

I see cycles, patterns, peculiarities and exceptions. Some passages are lifted straight out of my own journal. Some are unlikely to ever come out of my mouth.

The book is a sensational experience, guided by the subtle typographical transitions, meaningless on their own but purposeful together. The lush gradients were juxtaposed with the sharp serif words and morph in your peripheral vision like those who come and go in your life.

It’s humbling. It arouses full admiration for living, and all of its complexities. It’s a mirror. You can choose to dismiss it. Or you can look deeply into another version of you.

I was twenty-six, I thought: this is maturity. This is civilisation.

• Martin Amis, Experience