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Beth Browne (she/her)'s avatar

Life is too short to read bad books, or even books that don't interest you. I give you twenty pages. If you're not getting me hooked by then, I'm done!

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Beth Kephart's avatar

I was just amazed that I had no memory AT ALL of a single page of this book. Then I saw that I had carefully annotated the book, page by page, the margins filled. Who was I, back then, that I somehow just kept reading—so very unhappily—to the end. Yes. Life is short, Beth. No more of that for me.

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Becoming Human's avatar

Reading books that are quality but different than your normal is how one changes themself. Every good book is good for you.

“ If you read what everybody else is reading you think what everybody else is thinking”

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Beth Kephart's avatar

It's funny. I only read a handful of the "big books" each year. Most of the time I'm looking for the rare, the unusual, the unheralded. I think that's what I understand best. Or at least what my heart wishes to pursue.

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Not The Enemy's avatar

Borrowing from our own libraries. Yes! Get those old friends down from the shelf! (And putting off dusting sounds perfect). I loved this post, and I know I'll savor your new book.

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Beth Kephart's avatar

To no more dusting! (Today, at least. Weirdly today I don’t want to dust because I am reading documents that are 300 years old (scanned documents). Somehow I find this thrilling.

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Karen Rile's avatar

I’ve had the same experience of starting to read a book from my shelves, and then realizing I have annotations in it. But no memory at all of the book. I’ve even found ARCs books that I had reviewed — filled with marginal notes. No memory of reading the book or writing the review.

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Beth Kephart's avatar

It all just left me feeling flabbergasted about my own mind. What else am I missing? Nearly everything, I suspect. I am a stranger to my own history.

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Karen Rile's avatar

We forget so much! It’s one reason to write—memories survive in our written words.

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Beth Kephart's avatar

My thoughts precisely. The thing I tussled with across the pages of My Life in Paper. And so we write, and we keep parts of ourselves we might have already lost otherwise.

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Linda Hoenigsberg's avatar

I loved when you got to the part where you started skimming. But I'm excited to do a slow read through "Tomorrow Will Bring Sunday's News!"

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Beth Kephart's avatar

Oh, Linda. I am so glad to hear that! I hope you don't feel the need to skim!

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Marisol Muñoz-Kiehne's avatar

Skim, scan, scroll, cull, throw.

TMI, waste of fine TIME.

Seek, save worthy words.

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Mar 28
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Beth Kephart's avatar

Loved Lincoln! I tend to love odd books. And to wrote them. It was the terrible flatness and obvious plotting of Simone’s novel

That did me in. It seemed like it was written to instruct a mind. But it was all so obvious in its quest.

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