#on books and reading

[soracities]

"As an educator, I don’t just want you to feel what I feel. I don’t want you to consider me correct because I said it beautifully. I want to sharpen your critical thinking skills and your world-making capacities. I absolutely do not leave emotion out of that! Emotions are as central as the written, verbal, numeric, social, ecological knowledges we are able to gain to navigate this world and the next. I am just… extra cognizant of how much I can lead viewers to feel with me without further thought. The videos of mine that go most viral are ones where I show the most emotion, whatever that emotion is: hopeful, cheery, despondent, grieved, furious, combative. We love emotion. We live such isolated, stifled lives.

The challenge of reading is to navigate the narrative without the overtures of overt feelings. There is no face to latch onto, no music that sways you. Words on a page especially cannot compete with screen-time. They’re not meant to. The boredom opens up space in your mindscape to your own thoughts, opinions, and feelings."

—Ismatu Gwendolyn, "you've been traumatized into hating reading (and it makes you easier to oppress)", from Threadings on Substack

[heavenlyyshecomes]

misc readings

On books and reading!

Reading insecurity, katy waldman, slate

The deep space of digital reading, paul la farge, nautilus

The curse of reading and forgetting, ian crouch, new yorker

Why read the classics, italo calvino (pdf)

How reading is like love: italo calvino on the ecstasy of surrendering to other dimensions of experience, the marginalian

Just read the book already, lauren miller, slate

Treasure the books no one else seems to love, molly templeton, tor

Papyralysis, jacob mikanowski, los angeles review of books

How to nurture a personal library, freya howarth, psyche

Brief notes on the art and manner of arranging one's books, georges perec

If I don't remember what I read, did I read it at all? molly templeton, tor

Never do that to a book, anne fadiman, slate

Mary oliver on how reading saved her life and the greatest antidote to sorrow, the marginalian

On the pleasures and solitudes of quiet books, emily st. john mandel, the millions

Being a better online reader, maria konnikova, new yorker

How 11 writers organize their personal libraries, emily temple, literary hub

How many errorrs are in this essay? ed simon, the millions

Adrienne rich on resistance, the liberating power of storytelling, and how reading emancipates, the marginalian

How we read series, wired

Fiction detective: on literary citation and search engine sleuthing, sophie haigney, the drift

our autofiction fixation, jessica winter, the new york times

[aaronstveit]

so you want to read more this year!

i answered an ask about this recently, but i thought i would make a post about it so i could (hopefully) be a bit more clear and helpful. i specifically wanna help people who used to read a lot, but have fallen off for a while now. obviously everyone is different, but i hope at least a few of these tips can help you.

let yourself read slowly. you don't have to speedrun every book you read; in fact, it's usually better if you don't. forget the way that you used to race through books when you were younger. let yourself take time with them now. especially if you haven't read much lately, it's going to take you longer to read now than it used to. and that's okay! a lot of stories are better when they are experienced slowly, so you can absorb them more.

stop viewing reading as a competition. you aren't trying to win a pizza party or special field trip now, so there is no need to compete with other readers. so what if someone else read 10 books in the time it took you to read 1? other readers have nothing to do with you. the only person you should be "competing with" is yourself.

that said, setting goals and challenges for yourself can be a life-changer. i'm not just talking about a goodreads goal, although setting a numerical goal is often helpful. but i mean setting more broad goals, like reading more books of certain genres, or more books by authors of color. setting goals without specified quantities can help you because it's not a pass-fail situation, it's just a personal challenge. there are also all sorts of reading challenges you can try, like reading a book for every letter of the alphabet. you can find any sort of reading challenge on the internet; the storygraph has a whole section dedicated to challenges, both site-run and user-run. you can even create your own! popsugar also runs a very popular year-long reading challenge.

experiment with book formats. physical books, e-books, and audiobooks allow several different formats for people to try out! figuring out which formats work best for you help you to enjoy reading and gain more from the experience. don't listen to people who say audiobooks aren't "reading." if you enjoy audiobooks, listen to them! the only person you have to answer to is yourself.

experiment with different genres. even if you think you know exactly what genres you like and don't like, try branching out and trying books outside of your comfort zone, especially if you haven't read a lot lately. you never know when your tastes might change!

don't be afraid to DNF or pause a book. the thing about reading as a hobby is that it's supposed to be fun. yes, you should read books that challenge you, but this doesn't mean you have to make it to the end of every book. if you're hating a book, if you dread picking it up, if it bores you: just quit. that way, you can find a book you actually enjoy to read. trying to force your way through a book you're hating just usually makes you read less in the long run.

utilize your public library if you have one. this one always feels obvious, and yet people always seem to forget it. libraries exist for a reason! a lot of libraries have apps where you can check out e-books and audiobooks, so definitely use those if you have them. if you want to read a physical copy of a book that your library doesn't have, you can probably request an interlibrary loan! and if they still don't have it, you can usually request that your library order a book.

take advantage of books in the public domain. most classics are now in the public domain, which means that you can read them for free on Project Gutenberg, and if you use apple products, you can usually find them as free ebooks on Apple Books as well. if you're looking for audiobooks, Project Gutenberg also has those. you can also check out LibriVox, which is a volunteer-based organization that provides free audiobooks of public domain books. you can find a lot of their books as free podcasts on spotify!

reread old favorites. this is my personal favorite way to get out of a reading slump. familiar favorites are great for getting your brain back into reading mode without having to introduce yourself to a brand new story. you can also take the opportunity to annotate, if you're into that! speaking of which:

don't let the idea of annotation intimidate you. if you're not being graded, you can do whatever you want with annotations! i know some people who choose specific themes and tab them in their books, which is cool. some people just highlight favorite quotes and passages, and that's good too! you can pick out foreshadowing, make notes on things you find funny or interesting, even draw on the pages! if it's your copy of a book, then you can do whatever you like with it.

challenge yourself to write reviews. even if it's only a few sentences, it makes you engage more with the story, which is a good thing! you don't have to share these reviews, you can keep them in a private journal or document if you like. but it's good to make you think more about the book you've just read.

check the trigger warnings. if you have any triggers whatsoever, you definitely want to check trigger warnings before you read a book. you can usually find them by scrolling through goodreads reviews, or by googling "[book name] trigger warnings."

let yourself get distracted sometimes. i know this sounds counterintuitive, but hear me out. if you're in the middle of reading and suddenly you start thinking about scrolling through social media or something, finish your chapter and then let yourself scroll for a few minutes. it's better to give yourself a few minutes to scroll and then come back to your book, rather than continue "reading" while just thinking about scrolling. i'm not saying to put down your book and devote yourself to your instagram feed for the rest of the day; just take a few minutes, then get back to your book. do it between every chapter if you have to. or, if you decide you want a snack or something to drink, go get it! you don't have to sit still for hours on end if that doesn't work for you.

find someone, anyone, that you can talk to about books. it can be a person irl or online, a friend or coworker or family member. you can join a book club or a discord server. just, if you can, find someone to talk to about the books you're reading. this is another way to engage more with your reading material, because you're thinking about it in conversation, and it's also a way to get more excited about the things you're reading! you don't even have to be reading the same books. you can also recommend books to each other, and discover new favorites this way.

try reading more than one book at a time. mix and match genres, time periods, and styles so that you have different books going for different moods. that way, if one book isn't holding your attention, you have another one that will.

social media is cool, but don't let it control you. let social media bring you new book recommendations and friends, but don't let it dictate what you read or how you organize your bookshelves. just because everyone else is reading something doesn't mean you have to, if you don't want to; just because everyone else has a picture-perfect reading nook doesn't mean you need one, too. you aren't less of a reader because you don't spend hundreds of dollars on new books, or because you don't read the most popular genres and authors. you also aren't less of a reader for reading what's most popular! again, you aren't in competition with anyone else. don't let bookfluencers steal your joy.

obviously, this list isn't all-encompassing or universal. this is just the advice that helped me get back into reading after years of barely touching a book. i hope there is something on this list that can help you, if you need it. happy reading!

[doctorslippery]

[sourdough-seal]

bingewatching will never come close to bingereading. there is nothing like blocking out the entire Earth for ten hours to read a book in one sitting no food no water no shower no bra and emerging at the end with no idea what time it is or where you are, a dried-up prune that's sensitive to light and loud noises because you've been in your room in the dark reading by the glow of a single LED. it's like coming back after a three-month vacation in another dimension and now you have to go downstairs and make dinner. absolutely transcendental

[theaftersundown]

*writes two paragraphs after months of literally nothing and it took three hours*

[going2hell4everythingbutbeingbi]

I firmly believe that some stories can never be translated into a different medium and that's okay

[septemberkisses]

the fact that i'm no longer the same age as the protagonists of novels and films i once connected to is so heartbreaking. there was a time when I looked forward to turning their age. i did. and i also outgrew them. i continue to age, but they don't; never will. the immortality of fiction is beautiful, but cruel.

[great-and-small]

The majority of the Earth’s rodents: How do you survive environments with practically zero oxygen, feel no pain, and live for decades when none of the rest of us can???

Naked mole-rats:

[roseworth]

i think theres this idea in the general public that the "best" fanfic gets turned into real books like 50 shades of grey. but the truth is that the best fanfic can never be published as an actual book because its intricately woven into the canon material so its inseparable even if you change the names

[lou-wilham]

Just a quick note from your friendly neighborhood bookworm/indie author

if you use kindle for the majority of your library, they will be shutting down the function that allows you to download your files and transfer them via USB on the 26th of February. Which doesn't sound like a huge deal, but this also means that if a book is taken off Amazon for any reason—like it being banned—they can scrape it off your kindle as well. So maybe backup your library?

Edit: as an indie author I feel like I should make a small note that this is not an excuse to say “fuck Amazon I’ll just pirate my books”. Please don’t do that. No one’s reaction so far has been that but I’m begging you not to react that way. That doesn’t hurt Amazon it hurts authors.

Some alternatives are

- check and see if the author sells their books on other marketplaces. Hint: any not enlisted on Ku are probably wide

- check your library. If they’re not at your library request them.

- if all else fails, reach out to the author. I have 100% hunted down a way for my book to be available to a reader that couldn’t access it for whatever reason. And I’d do it again.

Just for the love of 🧀 don’t pirate them.

[soracities]

"it's not my job to tell you that horse thieves are bad people"!!!

(Claire Mesud, interviewed by Publisher's Weekly (2013) [ID'd])

[heavenlyyshecomes]

georges perec, brief notes on the art and manner of arranging one's books

[kowabungadoodles]

Non online people: I love Harry Potter! I use Chat GPT to write my emails ;) Come find me on X, I'll send you my ai-generated spotify playlist! I'm thinking about buying some cryptocurrencies, do you know which ones are good? Me taking 500 points of psychic damage trying not to turn into a unskippable cutscene: Haha, conversations are so fun.

[bookwyrminspiration]

I can behave normally around books