some famous booktok tropes

'faces a reader makes'

addicted to books

more sticky tabs than pages

the 'aesthetic' of the reading 'lifestyle' as a separate thing from actually reading   

the long and the short

I'm prejudiced against short books, but when a book overcomes that prejudice and I can see that it holds real value, I then appreciate that book all the more. Examples include Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, The Anxiety of Influence and A Map of Misreading by Harold Bloom. 

There's nothing like a book that is both really long and really good though, and there are a lot of examples of that - The Idiot and The Possessed by Fyodor Dostoevsky, War and Peace and Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy, Middlemarch and Daniel Deronda by George Eliot, David Copperfield, The Old Curiosity Shop, Martin Chuzzlewit, Dombey and Son and Little Dorrit by Charles Dickens, A House for Mr Biswas by V S Naipaul, A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry, to name a few. 

the death of the artist

Why do we read? It's hard to answer that question. There's no doubt that we get something real and substantial from our engagement with texts. 

The question of ‘why’ is related to the question of ‘what’. What is a text? What does engaging with a text involve? 

In high school we had the idea that the kind of analysis undertaken in the course of criticism, theory and the study of English - that that was pointless. It didn't help us to appreciate or understand the text, but anyway, reading itself - engaging with all of these texts - is pointless, so we thought. 

Barthes distinguishes between the 'work' and the 'text', where the work is the words on the page - the artifact - and the text is the mental field that the work gives rise to.... something like that. 

We don't think of the way we respond to music as a kind of reading, but it is. The same is true of art, ads and stuff written on packaging labels. So, I can do a close reading of the packaging of my acrylic paints set. The box asserts that:

Whether you're planning a masterpiece or you want to try acrylic painting for the first time - this set is ready for anything. 

So, 'this set' is autonomous. This set of paints is more proactive than you...only just. While you are only 'planning' or 'wanting' to try, the paints are 'ready'. Whether you are a professional artist or a novice, it's immaterial to 'this set', which is ready regardless. You are just the vehicle for these paints to make their art.

only natural

Part of discovering the truth is the realization that it's not what you think it is. That realization is not something to be feared. It's liberating to break free from the illusion that we always know the truth when we see it - that judging the truth comes naturally. 

quotidian supernature

The thing that's interesting and mysterious about this idea of beginning a new life, which is also a continuation of your old life, is the reality that the two lives both continue. It's like there are two personas within the one person. 

That's something that I think confuses a lot of people. It confused me. When I first became a Christian, because of everything the Bible says about being a new creation, and being born again, and so on, I thought that, when I take that step and I actually become a Christian, the old me would be no more. That's why it was such a difficult step to take. 

But then when I did take the step, it was an anti-climax. Here I was - the same. It was a relief, but it was also a huge challenge, because now I had to do all the things that I thought a Christian does but with the same old nature that I had always had. 

La Vita Nuova

My experience with detox made certain spiritual concepts come alive for me. Like, how you can, on the one hand, be the same person you've always been, but, on the other, be a new creation. How is it possible to be both? I know now because I've experienced it.  

I had a conversation with the social worker early in my 10 day detox and she told me that, of course detox is going to be challenging because it was very literally the beginning of my new life - a life without alcohol and valium. That idea really stayed with me. I was beginning a new life. It wasn't just wishful thinking or some theological sleight of hand; it was a solid reality - the fact that I stopped drinking and thereby began a new life.

Before, I never imagined that I could be in the position I am in now where I just won't ever drink, ever again. It's not will-power or self-discipline. I don't have to resist temptation. I'm fortunate to have learned that drinking alcohol is incompatible with life for me. My biggest failures taught me that lesson. The first failure happened after I had stopped drinking previously for a couple of years. Someone was encouraging me to have a drink and I thought - what's the harm? I can just go back to not drinking tomorrow. But I didn't. I found myself back in the cycle of regular drinking. So, that's the first lesson. 

The second failure and major lesson was what led to me going to detox. I was tapering off Valium and my Doctor forced me to reduce a bit faster than I could handle. I thought about how I was going to cope and decided to drink to get through it - not excessively, just enough to manage. Just like it was a lie that I could have one or two drinks and then go back to sobriety, it was a lie that I could drink just enough to cushion myself from the suffering of a taper that was a little too fast. When you think about what valium and other benzos are, and what alcohol is, it makes sense that it wouldn't work. But to say that it didn't work is an understatement. It destroyed me. Alcoholism took hold real fast. I was drinking at least 2 bottles of red wine every day, and I needed to just to function - to do anything. I knew that it was killing me - destroying my mental and physical health - but I was stuck in the cycle. 

That lasted for 5 or 6 months, and then I went into detox, which saved my life. The staff at the detox facility I was at are amazing. I had more than one truly life-changing conversation while I was there. I started eating better. It was the beginning of my new life, as messy and terrifying and intense but exciting and joyous as new life is. 

duality

Because of the length of the Bible, one of the challenges is the dichotomy of working through the whole thing while also making sure that you're regularly engaging with certain parts. Like, obviously you're going to want to read the gospels frequently, and then also the epistles as well, but if you were to just read from cover to cover, starting in Genesis, if you read a couple of chapters a day, it's going to be nearly a year before you even get to the New Testament. So, the challenge is to systematically read through the whole book and, at the same time, be dipping into different parts. 

So I came up with a solution....I divide the Bible into 4 sections: history books, the prophets (+ psalms and proverbs), the gospels and acts, and then the epistles and the rest of the New Testament. I read a chapter from section 1, then a chapter from section 2, then section 3, then section 4, then back to section 1, the next chapter of, etc.