|
I have an old book on Kundalini yoga that is so impregnated with incense that every time I flip through it it smells like flowers
|
#
¿
Jun 3, 2020 00:20
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 17, 2024 14:22 |
|
|
Works for thicker books too  Helps if you have alien hands like me There's also this move using the wrist for support, usually if I'm lying in bed with the bottom resting on my chest 
Heath fucked around with this message at 04:40 on Jun 3, 2020 |
|
#
¿
Jun 3, 2020 04:37
|
|
|
One of the especially great things about reading antiquated literature is that you can learn cool and good words, like this one: "gimcrack," meaning 'flimsy or poorly made, but deceptively attractive'
|
|
#
¿
Jun 3, 2020 04:58
|
|
|
One thing I've started doing to make my reading more thorough is to start taking notes on some of the books I read. I don't do it for all of them, but occasionally I'll be reading something and find so many passages that I find moving, important or that I want to remember that I've started to keep track of them using a notecard that doubles as a bookmark.  On the card I put the book title and the author, and the date I started reading it, and the date I finish, once I do so. If something catches my attention I'll put down the page number and either paraphrase or quote the interesting bit, or write a short description of the topic. It really need not be anything more complicated than that. Keeping it on a card that doubles as a bookmark means that I've always got it with me so long as I have the book, and then that card will stay with the book once I'm finished and put it on my shelf. I'm an inveterate physical book reader and I detest reading stories from a screen. Often, I'll pick up a book I read years ago and look at my notes and flip to something that catches my interest, and see how my perspective may have changed, or I'll suddenly re-experience some passage I had forgotten, or find some quote I liked at the time that I now have no idea what I found so appealing about it. It's helpful for ones I do remember and want to reference. Having the dates on there can be a bit of a shock when I realize that it's been four years since I read this book and could do with a re-read, or even the realization that it took me four months to finish something. I have a poor memory for such things and I have only a very impressionistic sense of the things I've read, and this allows me to not only connect with the author but at my past self experiencing the book. It's also good if you're the kind of person who likes the idea of marginalia but doesn't want to mark up their books.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 3, 2020 05:44
|
|
|
If you really like sci-fi and the idea of parallel Earths, you may enjoy Vladimir Nabokov's Ada, or Ardor ("Ada" pronounced "ah-da.") Don't look up a synopsis, just dive right in to the world of Antiterra.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 5, 2020 06:34
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 17, 2024 14:22 |
|
|
While there are definitely people who would say to never read "lowbrow" material, if you're thinking seriously about what the consumption of written material means and what its function is in a person's life, even if you do believe that higher level fiction is in some way necessary to the development of a well-rounded reader, it's not necessary to be so prescriptive. Speaking from my own experience at least, I think that so long as you're making an honest effort to read more challenging material, it will naturally create a general desire to consume more of it, which is to say, the more literature you read, the more literature you want to read, and that the progression from reading predominantly (say) genre fiction to a more diverse catalog will happen all on its own. And it need not be total; they're your drat eyes, read whatever you want to. This is a crossroads with which I struggle a lot in talking to people who have an interest in the abstract concept of "reading" or "being a reader" but perhaps limit themselves almost exclusively to "lowbrow" choices. There are a lot of problems in how we talk about written work, not least of which is that there's a sort of baked-in rudeness in separating broad swathes of fiction into upper and lower echelons, and that there are always exceptions, and that the lines between them are not at all clear and their specific qualities are indefinable (e.g., is a book like Nabokov's Ada, or Ardor technically sci-fi or fantasy because it takes place in an alternate dimension to reality, even though it features virtually none of the other hallmarks of those genres?) Most of the time I don't even know how to refer to things, because one man's lowbrow literature is another man's challenging and complex work of art. And the goal is never to insult someone's tastes, but to encourage them to expand them, a sentiment that seems to be lost on a number of people. I really do believe that literature, properly crafted, passionate and nuanced, has transformative power. Taking your reading seriously not only makes you a better reader, it makes you a better writer, too. It brings you to the depths of language that you will simply never encounter elsewhere, especially nowadays when our primary modes of consumption of written words are hastily written and poorly edited Medium articles, headlines of news pieces and maybe the first two paragraphs thereof, and Twitter, where the entire context of a post may be no more than "lmao" and a photo of something you're supposed to feel some kind of secondhand embarrassment from. Or Something Awful posts, which run the full gamut. I really believe that these things have an effect not only on what people think, but how they think, the way in which their brains process information. I've definitely noticed this trend in my own thinking and often catch myself applying some kind of internet logic to reality, and try to take steps to correct it. Longform reading, and literature especially, can act as something of a cleanser, acting for the mind as a probiotic does for the stomach, introducing the germs of expansive new thoughts and leaving less space for the endlessly self-referential and spiraling internet-thoughts, "memes" in the original sense. It keeps the mind at ease to go elsewhere once in a while, and above all else to do so deliberately. Reading certain things shores up the mind in other ways. A while back there was a discussion in the Other Thread about what it means to read literature written by a fascist, the implicit assumption being that most of the people on these forums are well left-of-center. Yukio Mishima in particular came up a lot, who, if you don't know him, was a highly prolific Japanese author, to this day considered one of the greatest in the country's modern era, who was decidedly nationalist and even attempted a coup against the government to try and restore power and glory to the Japanese emperor, failed, and committed suicide. His politics most definitely have a presence in his writing, and it's not hard to see. There was a lot of back and forth about the value of reading someone like that, from people arguing that there's value to be found in it, irrespective of the politics, in the skill of the writing and the poetic metaphor, in the musing on other non-political subjects; conversely, the idea that reading a fascist enables his legacy in some way, propagates problematic ideas, and that if one is politically sincere that their time could be better spent elsewhere. While this was going on, I remembered that I owned a copy of Mishima's Runaway Horses, the second book in his Sea of Fertility tetralogy and (I believe) the most overtly political of the four. I was very curious about it, having not read any authors who were overtly nationalist as such, but I had a lot of misgivings about doing so that were shared by a few other people in the discussion, namely some fears about "wasting my time" by giving it to someone whose opinions I don't respect, or even having problematic ideas introduced into my brain by way of something well-written and a fear that they might take root somehow. I can say now that I'm halfway through the third book, having also read the first now, and that I am no worse for wear than when I started - if anything, I've most definitely gained something from reading this man's work, if nothing else because it has given me glimpses into a more totalizing view of his psyche, and what informs and is informed by his political leanings, and his views on death and its relationship to meaning, transient beauty, youth and life, and the context of a writer informed by the most turbulent eras of his nation, all of it much deeper than simply having problematic views. The sheer sincerity of the work, no matter the subject, is moving, and if I'm being truthful, refreshing to experience, especially as a contrast to the deep and biding insincerity in which one is mired by having an online existence. There's not an ounce of cynicism in it that I can see, anyway, and I'm far enough removed from the context of it to maintain a personal interest with enough detachment that I can look at it for what it is. None of this is to praise it for its politics, from whose context I am again quite removed, being an American in 2020 and not a Japanese man in 1965 or whenever. None of this is something I would have experienced if I had simply chosen not to read it because I ostensibly disagree with the politics of it, and the secondary effect has in fact been an increased degree of personal confidence, ridding me of the fear that I may be moved by pretty words to somewhere I don't want to be mentally. It has represented a step forward in my thinking, which is perhaps one of little consequence but one that has felt important to me. I will also say that none of this is meant to suggest that I think that reading Mishima, or any fascist, nationalist or right-winger is necessary, but I do believe it is important, just one of the many fruitful paths you can take in what is a widely branching forest. And this is to say nothing of the prose itself, which is absolutely dripping with masterful metaphor and similie, a virtual tour of Japan's natural beauty and its shaping of the author's mind. The crux is not in reading a specific thing as much as it is in reading a diversity of work. Which is something that requires deliberate effort, and time, and also a willingness to acknowledge when you've been beating your head against a wall and to move on to something else - the great works aren't going anywhere, and you can always return to them later. My go-to recommendation for people looking to branch away from genre and into proper literature is always Nabokov, in particular Lolita, a book that has earned every controversial statement said about it and then some. I believe it has a unique place in the canon of literature and makes a good entry point for a number of reasons, namely because the subject matter occupies a space both grotesque and titillating, scandalous and moving, that it will keep hold of the timid reader while the skilled playfulness of the prose will move them along. It's a very difficult book to put down, even for people who are otherwise not avid readers, and it breaks a lot of barriers and challenges notions of what constitutes a deep or complex story. Its depth of magnitudes may make you cast a sidelong glance at other stories that you may have thought were deep and complex but seem a little more threadbare by comparison; and thus, are you opened to the wider world of what books and stories can be. The world is always bigger than you think it is, so to speak. I'm not generally one to re-read books, but I have read Lolita twice now, and it only got better the second time, especially with Alfred Appel's annotations and a pencil with which to make my own notes in the margins, another thing I have not generally done with books but have started to do more recently. The difference between literature and all else is that only literature can offer you that. And what I've given here is only what I've had time to talk about, since there's infinitely more value in it than I'm able to articulate, and there's never a humanly attainable end to it - it is impossible to read every piece of capital-L Literature in one life time, let alone everything else.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 28, 2020 20:20
|
|