Status Updates From Every Day I Read: 53 Ways t...

This book is a short collection of reflective essays about everything reading - when to read, what to read, how to read, how to talk about reading with friends… everything! I’ve never felt so seen as a reader as I feel by Hwang in this treasure of a book. Who hasn’t dreamt about being absorbed in a book while sipping a delicious cappuccino in a busy Italian piazza but when moment came was unable to?

“Lee's foreword made an impression on me:

‘What is important to the women is the clear understanding of themselves and their lives, knowing that they shouldn't live for others but for themselves... They bear the shackles of fate, but never once did they back down and give in. Amidst the stereotypes, the absurdity, and the exhaustion, they do not lose sight of the power of intellect and wisdom.”

“Lee Hwa-gyeong's To Love, To Write, To Destroy, a book about ten women writers who had it harder in life just because they were born as women and lived as women - Susan Sontag, Hannah Arendt, Rosa Luxemburg, Simone de Beauvoir, Ingeborg Bachmann, Virginia Woolf, George Sand, Françoise Sagan, Sylvia Plath and Jane Austen.“

“Whenever I feel a little lost, I think about my favourite books. Instead of letting myself be swayed by others, I turn to books that have anchored me and continue to be a supportive presence in my life. And the more of such books I collect, the stronger I become.”

“The classics are those books about wich you usually hear people saying: ‘I’m rereading…’, never ‘I’m reading…’”
i honestly haven’t thought about how many classics i’ve read…also what is a classic? like who decides what’s a classic?

“You are nobody to the hills or the thick boughs heavy with greenery. You are no longer a role, or a status, not even an individual, but a body, a body that feels sharp stones on the paths, the caress of long grass and the freshness of the wind. When you walk, the world has neither present nor future: nothing but the cycle of mornings and evenings. Always the same thing to do all day: walk.”