@chestas I propose a toast 🥂 to all the Alephs and the Bottlemen out there! to the Bennys and the Annabelles and the Kenjis!!
and, of course, the Books! (which Books...? ALL the Books!!)
@ShaulaEvans
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🔥treasure fire💎
@gemsmoke@eldritch.cafe
Posts
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What is one book that positively shaped who you are as a person and how did it influence you? -
What is one book that positively shaped who you are as a person and how did it influence you?@ShaulaEvans "The Book of Form and Emptiness" by Ruth Ozeki [2021]:
• one of the first books I read after a long period during which reading itself was difficult for me... reading has always been one of my favorite things, so it helped me reconnect with myself at a time I needed to relearn who I even am
• my mom (who recommended it to me) and I bonded over the similarities between our lives and the MCs' (a teen who starts having psychotic symptoms after his father dies, a now-single mother doing her best to support her son) and we appreciated the perspectives it offered us of each other's experiences (my psychiatrically troubled upbringing, her parenting me through my psychiatrically troubled upbringing...)
• I felt so... seen... like, I've definitely met actual folks like these characters during my own stints at the mental hospital (and dealt with this degree of incompetency from various institutions!!!)
• this is one of those stories that's about everything: surviving adolescence, overcoming bereavement, environmentalism, workers' rights, critiques of the psychiatric system, the importance of libraries...
• The Book itself is a character, and a delightful one at that... I'd like to think all books feel the way about us that This Particular Book does 📚🖤
• the story references—and is what got me into—Jorge Luis Borges, who is quintessential schizo reading material (and has inspired several of my favorite authors... which makes me feel like I'm creatively headed in the "right" direction with my own work)