Beard Between the Lines

Beard Between the Lines

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Beard Between the Lines

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If reading is like eating words… 𝗿𝗲𝘄𝗿𝗶𝘁𝘁𝗲𝗻 𝗳𝗿𝗼𝗺 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗯𝗹𝗼𝗴 ⁣ If reading is like eating words and digesting ideas, writing must be like cooking. If you think that way, your piece of writing will turn into food you could make in a million different possible ways. Food for thought or food for the mere delight of savoring words. ⁣ So, say your words are a chicken fillet, a cut of boneless meat. You might just want to sear it on a pan and serve it with a pinch of salt or spices, a dash of olive oil, and a parsley leaf on top, and call it a dish. ⁣ And it’s gonna be good. I know it will. I like that sometimes. Simple, looking like the safest choice, but still good. ⁣ But I don’t know about you. I find a Schnitzel more interesting. Bread crumb coated, fried crisp and golden, crunching in my teeth, melting on my tongue, making me talk with my mouth full cause even though I want to savor the words in silence, at the same time I want to pronounce them out loud to have a full experience. Add some potato to it and mayonnaise to dip it in, make it smooth, and wow. The taste. ⁣ That’s how I think writing ceases to be just writing and gets seasoned to become literature. When you’ve got texture, flavor, memory, balance, taste, explosion. That’s how I like my words. Served on a literary dish you’ll remember and crave and ask for more because you had such an amazing sensorial experience with their words when they got into your mouth. Because the aftertaste of those words lingered longer in your brain’s papillae after you chewed them in your wild phonetic degustation. ⁣ Now, how do you do it? ⁣ 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁𝘀 How do you add that texture and taste to your writing? How do you create that explosion of senses with your words and sentences? And if you don’t write, when was the last time you had such a meal from a book? And what book was it? ⁣ 👊🏻 Beard
It started with a real story in watercolor, captions and balloons. It was about an artist who changed the world of comic books and superheroes, a writer with a brilliant mind for super stories, and a battle of rights supported by the power of storytelling and a loyal readership. I still don’t know how the story ends, tho. The last page of the book was far from being the last chapter of the still ongoing war, unfortunately. ⁣ A few days later, I entered a wardrobe that was a portal to the amazing mind of a writer and his reading life. Heard his ideas about reading, stole some of them, learned new ways to travel through books. I highly recommend you do the same. Still walking in the same side of road, I heard a best-selling author’s meditations about his personal library, while he’s moving, and I listened carefully to his advocation for the vital role of libraries. ⁣ Totally unexpectedly, I swerved and fell into an America with gods and magic and choices and disturbing scenes and ironing fates, all that rolling down a hill of storytelling geniality. Meanwhile, I visited the past of Greek philosophers, bored to death with some of them, learned to hate Socrates but understand him, and loved Aristotles, still not knowing exactly why. ⁣ The last part of that trip led me to a quest for writing with a theme or finding themes to write, something I’m recently obsessed with, and the exact reason for a turning point in my writing journey. And then, convinced by the author of a profanity-riddled self help book, I’m closing the month with trying to calm the f down. ⁣ That was my reading month. Here are the books I’ve read: ⁣ • Superman: The Unauthorized Biography, by Glen Weldon • Reading Life, by C. S. Lewis • Packing my Library, by Alfredo Manguel • American Gods, by Neil Gaiman • Ancient Greek Philosophy, Canterbury Classics • Writing Your Story’s Theme, by K.M. Weiland • Calm The F Down, by Sarah Knight ⁣ 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁𝘀 How was your month in books? Can you find patterns and connections in your reading choices? Can you link what you’ve read and give us a summary of how this month felt in your reading life and mind? If not, why? ⁣ 👊🏻 Beard
Sometimes restarting the system is what it takes to fix it. ⁣ I have over five hundred unread books on my Kindle and shelves. It’s got completely out of control and I’m FREAKING OUT! No, I’m not. I’m kidding. But I do wanna do something about it. I can’t just stay cool and live by that talk about Taleb and Eco and the antilibrary. ⁣ I mean, yes, knowing I still have a lot to read is keeping me “intellectually curious and humble”, for sure, but at the same time, f— it. I don’t want a big antilibrary in my life. You know? ⁣ And the cherry on top is this crazy urge to reread some books too. Knowing I’ll have different ideas and conclusions and knowing I’ll read them better now that my writing mind has evolved. And also because I want to read them better. ⁣ So, here’s the thing: those books are standing there, waiting for me to read them. Each one looking at me like a pet frozen in a pleading face crying for my hands to pick them up to read them. I’ll defrost them from this whole frozen state and free their ink and words back to life to finally let them rest in peace again as soon as I close their back cover with ideas boiling in my mind and a burial speech written on an Instagram caption. ⁣ Let’s begin our works then. Or should I say, restart them? Yea, more like it. ⁣ 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁𝘀 So... how would you start your reading life if you had just realized you can read anything you want in a better way? ⁣ 👊🏻 Beard
Saturday morning. I’ll finish American Gods. Reading it gave me a different perspective of Gaiman’s work. It’s interesting to see how good he is with his narrative and use of vivid language. He’s a great storyteller, and I like his diction, even on the parts where he brings a strong unease with his choice of words. I’m still trying to get over a scene at the beginning of the book that I called “the invagination scene”. If you read it, you know what I mean. If not, it’s nothing related to cells or developmental biology, of course. But the premise of the book is very good, gods trying to live in America brought by immigrants who believe in them, walking around disguised as ordinary people. Gaiman can balance magic and mundane well enough to bring wittiness and criticism in this book while we keep hooked to know whatever will happen to Shadow and his job as an emissary of a Norse god after a shitty series of episodes that bring him to this point. ⁣ ■ Have you read American Gods? What do you think of Neil Gaiman’s work? ⁣ – João
A few days ago, I asked you what makes a good reader. I’ve got many responses for that but I wanted to start with three of them. (1) The adjective does not apply to readers, cause one is either a reader or is not, (2) There’s no such thing as a good reader, and (3) “A reader is a reader is a reader. No competition and no good or bad”. That was not Gertrude Stein, by the way, but it was still an interesting answer. ⁣ Although I like those responses and kinda see what they meant, I have to say that there IS such thing as a good or bad reader, unfortunately. And it’s not about competition, it’s about competENCE. The ability to do something efficiently. And it’s also not about reading a lot of books, but reading a lot FROM books. ⁣ Here’s what makes you a good reader in our opinion: ⁣ • You read with all your senses, your attention, and mindfulness, and you reflect on the words you eat from your fovea to digest them in your brain. Then you absorb the nutrients of what you’ve read to build muscles of thinking and enjoyment. ⁣ • You grasp the idea of a book with your best reflexes and abilities just like Mr. Miyagi catches a fly with his chopsticks. Or maybe not that fast, which makes you hungry for more knowledge and mind growth so you can do that as a natural skill and not a trick. ⁣ • You read and think critically, which means you discover information and ideas within a text and you’re able to evaluate them for deciding what to accept and believe. ⁣ • You love reading and you enjoy it so much that you see reading as a good habit in your life and a natural part of your daily routine. You understand its benefits and you allow yourself a daily intake of it as a daily elixir. ⁣ • You immerse yourself in what you read and the words are not words anymore, they’re doors to worlds and characters and ideas and knowledge. You swim in a pool of intellectual opportunities. ⁣ • You share your passion with the world and everyone around you and you try to encourage other people to read more and better, just because it’s GOOD. ⁣ Or so I think… ⁣ ■ Well, would add something else? And tell me about what you’re reading right now, how is it affecting you? ⁣ – João
I noticed an interesting thing about my idea of writing after all this time. Something that is changing the way I’m sharpening my tools or conjuring my muses. Whenever I ask people why they write, the most common answer is either because they want to tell a story they wanted to read or because they have these stories inside their heads. That’s good, but not enough for me. I love storytelling, too, but I don’t have a story that I want to tell just for the sake of it, if that makes any sense. I think storytelling is just the means for an end. ⁣ Writing for me is not about “l’art pour l’art”, art for the sake of art. Maybe poetry is, but even poems shouldn’t be like “a worm chewing its own tail” in my opinion. There has to be a reason, a consequence, a meaning, maybe a moral. Something to think about, you know. And, for me, also something out of the common box-checking themes in vogue. I’m not here for that. Not in the world for that. ⁣ I want to write things like the story of a madman who thinks he’s a knight and makes you question which is better between living a life you create or accepting reality as it is, without thinking that’s crazy. I wanna write something like an interesting psychological monologue of an overwhelmed woman who kills a cockroach and starts thinking about her existence. Or the story of the cockroach itself and how transitioning from a man to a grotesque bug nullifies his whole existence. I wanna write the story of a guy who dies without achieving anything and then invites you to an amazing posthumous discussion about his life, making you think about how you wanna live YOUR life after what you learn from his misery. I wanna write about a hundred years of generations and episodes that make you think about changes and the inevitable growth of the world for better or for worse. ⁣ Things like that, you know? ⁣ ■ What about you? Why do you write? Don’t say it’s because you love it or because you have stories you want to tell. Tell me the real WHY you’re writing a story. ⁣ And if you’re not a writer, just a reader, still important, tell me this, When you read, what kind of theme makes you love an author for? ⁣ – João
Before you even finish reading this, you’ll be looking at reading from a different perspective. But first, tell me something, What value do you find in your current read? ⁣ Thousands of words printed on a piece of paper can become a huge blurred stain if you squint. And if you focus on a single word on a text, all words around it may seem to disappear. Reading is an illusion. Not as in “fake”, but as a thing that is likely to be differently perceived or interpreted by the senses. And if you expand that idea, reading can lead anywhere you want. ⁣ Let that rest a little. Let’s think about the aphorism “time is money” now, but also from a different perspective. Think that time is your medium of exchange, a currency, like in that movie with JT. Let’s say you pay for everything with time and reading costs a few minutes of your limited account of hours. ⁣ A common thing I hear about the reading habit is that people don’t have time for it. And I get it. Life is crazy and unfair sometimes when it comes to time. And I know it makes sense to say we can’t afford to stop and sit for a precious while with a book that has nothing to do with our lives. When you waste your money on things you don’t need, you may end up without money for paying your bills. The same happens with time. When you waste it, it’s gone. I know. ⁣ So, yea, we only have 24 hours a day, and a huge part of that “money” is already allocated in a very tight budget. And we can’t ask for a raise. Therefore, what we do with the few minutes left in that budget has to be wisely chosen. But we all know that reading has a lot of benefits, and I definitely find it worth it to spend some minutes a day with it. I do. ⁣ I’m not gonna tell you there’s a right or wrong book to read, tho. I do think you should choose your reads wisely, even if it’s only a story to entertain you. But what I want you to think about is this: what if I told you you can control your senses to change how you read any book you want and what you perceive from it, and, by doing that, you’d be spending just a few minutes of your “money” on a priceless treasure? ⁣ • What do you think? ⁣ 👊🏻 João
Multitasking is a fallacy. Don’t try to convince me otherwise. Every time I try to do it, I end up falling in demise. Rhyming today I challenge you to read a list of things you cannot do. I mean, I think you can’t read and do those things, but tell me which one you don’t think is true. ⁣ • Reading while eating a mouthful of a very crunchy cereal without milk ⁣ • Reading while watching an action movie with pieces of popcorn getting lodged between your teeth and hurting your gum ⁣ • Reading and watching reels with random physically fit people collab-dancing to “I Like to Move It” ⁣ • Reading and riding a bicycle and listening to “Don’t Stop Believin’” by Journey, and waiting an eternity for the part you really know from the chorus ⁣ • Reading while eating a piece of cake in the morning after a fun night at the bar when you may or may not have climbed the counter to finally sing out loud “don’t stop! Believin’! Hold on to that feeeeelin’”, and thinking you’re lucky you’re still alive! ⁣ • Reading during a lobotomy (having or performing) or randomly scrolling social media ⁣ • Reading and trying to run the first 1K of a 5K to which you haven’t signed up for, but you think you can run anyway and who needs a stupid number to run a competition, but panting after 2 minutes of clumsily jogging ⁣ Let me know in the comments below. Which one you can do? I challenge you. Later today, I’m going to share a post on the blog about making time for reading. Some suggestions involve multitasking, but I’ll give you a very simple solution. ⁣ 👊🏻 Beardy
a list of arguments in defense of lists ⁣ There is a certain magic in a number of items consecutively written one below the other. A secret that only a few people know. And if you dig deeper, you’ll find lists in every great thinker’s works and habits. Also, we all tend to begin writing or speaking without much of a plan or structure. But lists can become a very strong device to make our writing and speaking more concise, effective, and structured when we need that. Because the human brain loves structures and because we’re all accustomed to storytelling for retaining information or enjoying a piece of writing or a speech, a list can work as a map to keep us on track. We usually call that kind of list an outline and it’s a lifesaver. ⁣ I wrote about lists in the blog today. A list of six arguments in defense of lists. Go check it out. ⁣ And I suggested in the post that it’s interesting to have a reference list of concepts from a book we read, quotes, historical facts, a timeline of anything, books related to a topic, thoughts we had while reading, songs, characters, worlds, interesting words, methods, ideas, etc. We never know as writers when that is gonna be useful. ⁣ So, do you keep any kind of list like that? Tell me more about it in the comments. ⁣ 👊🏻 João ⁣ . . . 🏷 #beardbetweenthelines #writer #lists #indefenseoflists #makinglists #newblogpost #writing #onwriting #ideas #bookstagram #readstagram #amwriting #blogger #bookblogger
reading life and the joy of worlds within it ⁣ Yesterday I read “Reading Life: The Joy of Seeing New Worlds Through Others’ Eyes”, by C.S. Lewis, a collection of essays and reflections about reading and the joy of books. In one of them he talked about how he sees reading as a window, or a door to a different world outside the capsules and bubbles of our selves. Does it ring any bell? ⁣ After reading that book I felt a new energy and motivation to read and talk about books and writing again. I feel like I’m back to the Narnia of my inspiration, to encourage you to read more and to improve this amazing skill. ⁣ In my blog post today, you’re gonna find thoughts about “Reading Life”. ⁣ Other books I’m reading this week: ⁣ • Packing My Library, by Alberto Manguel • American Gods, by Neil Gaiman #beardyread • Make Something Up, by Chuck Palahniuk ⁣ What about you? What are you reading this week? And what happens when you read? ⁣ 👊🏻 João ⁣ 🏷 #reader #currentlyreading #bookcommunity #reading #readersofinstagram #bookaholic #readstagram #ilovetoread #readmore #literary #onreading
At the end of this post, you’ll read a question that will make you question why you read this post. It’s Saturday. Let’s bring the bill and check out of another week where we stayed and survived. It was an intense first week of November with an important lesson to take for the rest of the month (and I’d say, for life, too): slowing down is the main priority now. And swimming against the tide will only make you tired of swimming. ⁣ So, here are some #saturdaymorning thoughts and updates: ⁣ #reading We’re reading AMERICAN GODS by Neil Gaiman in the #beardyread book club. It’s Gaiman’s birthday on November 10. What happens when you spend three years in prison and, after finally being free to go home, your love is killed in a freak accident and you board on a plane to end up meeting a stranger claiming to be an ancient god and king of America? Breathless? Let’s see where this amazing narrative will take us. ⁣ I’m reading other things to. We’ll talk about it later. ⁣ #writing Slowing down means reorganizing my writing and content. The intense content calendar planned for this month will be reduced in half due to the uncertainties and mess of this platform and my willing not to die from burnout, unfairly and incoherently caused by doing what I love. Writing. But you’re still gonna find me dwelling in the Gutenberg blocks of the bearded blog. And here, in this pool of nonsense, I’ll be just swimming and making a splash here and there. Some days more, some days less. I’m also loving the sound of blue birds lately. A renewed interest, I must say. You might find me tweeting with them. I’m “beardbetween” there. I had to cut “the lines” to meet their character limit. Lol ⁣ #weekend I’m gonna sign the check-out bill now. But I’ll leave that question I mentioned in the beginning. From time to time, and our biggest mistake, we forget to add value to our content before hitting the share button. And if what we write has no value, we can’t expect any return from our readers. So, tell me… ⁣ → What value do you look for when you open social media? And what value do you expect to get from the blogs and content you read? ⁣ Have a great weekend! ⁣ 👊🏻 João
How many books are too many books on a list? Asking for this bearded guy here who wants to work, write, create content, live, and read all the books in the world at the same time. Thanks to @companhiadasletras and my lack of good sense, I have this list of books to read: • DAVID COPPERFIELD, by Charles Dickens • DEAR KITTY, by Anne Frank • PACKING MY LIBRARY, by Alberto Manguel • FOUR PLAYS, by Anton Checkov • THE CONFESSIONS OF ARSENE LUPIN, by Maurice Leblanc • O MAPEADOR DE AUSÊNCIAS (THE MAPPER OF ABSENCES), by Mia Couto • BILLY SUMMERS, by Stephen King • FOREVER, INTERRUPTED, by Taylor Jenkins Reid • ON THE HAPPY LIFE, by Seneca ⁣ The big question here is: where do I start? Have you read any of those books? Which one did you read and love? Did you hate one of those books? ⁣ And if you have a list of books to read right now, what are you going to read next? ⁣ 👊🏻 João

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  • writer

    if reading is like eating words and digesting ideas, writing must be like cooking

    November 22, 2021 /

    Say your words are a chicken fillet, a cut of boneless meat. You can just sear it on a pan and serve it with a pinch of salt or some spices, a dash of olive oil, and parsley leaves (?) on top. And it’s gonna be good. Simple, but…

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    November 16, 2021 /

    Reading is more than just looking at ink on paper and fluently making something out of it. Reading is…

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    how to make time for reading and why this is not a how-to post like any other else you’ve read before

    November 12, 2021 /

    This is not going to be the first time I talk about this. And this is not gonna be the first time you’re gonna need to read this. Making time for reading is one of the biggest challenges of modern life, and it’s so challenging that most people end up thinking it's impossible or impracticable. But it’s not.

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    Sapir-Whorf hypothesis and how to be a writer of the world

    November 11, 2021 /

    The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis, or *language relativity* hypothesis, is a principle that suggests that the structure of a language affects its speaker’s perceptions and thoughts, thus affecting their behavior.

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  • lists,  productivity,  writer

    a very simple list of six arguments in defense of lists

    November 10, 2021 /

    There is a certain magic in a number of items consecutively written one below the other. A secret that only a few people know. And if you dig deeper, you’ll find lists in every great thinker’s works and habits.

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  • reader,  writer

    is a book what you want it to mean or what the author wanted it to say?

    November 9, 2021 /

    I want to provoke a reflection here without telling what I think about it. And before you decide not to keep reading this, that’s exactly the point of this post.

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    reading life and the joy of worlds within it

    November 8, 2021 /

    You might know the Lion or the Witch and even the Wardrobe. If you don’t, you should just know that any wardrobe is a very foolish place to shut oneself into, but there’s a magical one.

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    November 5, 2021 /

    Life can be crazy sometimes. Always too much going on at the same time. We’re always caught up in big projects, with no time for anything. But I think there’s a way to change that.

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    deadlines and the art of writing

    November 3, 2021 /

    I doubt you can even create something good while your whole system believes you’re in danger. I don’t know about you, but I need peace and quiet to write. Outside and inside. No noise. The only sounds I wanna hear when I’m writing are the whisper of a muse, the dialogues of my characters, and the voice of my mind echoing the words that I type.

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123
If reading is like eating words… 𝗿𝗲𝘄𝗿𝗶𝘁𝘁𝗲𝗻 𝗳𝗿𝗼𝗺 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗯𝗹𝗼𝗴 ⁣ If reading is like eating words and digesting ideas, writing must be like cooking. If you think that way, your piece of writing will turn into food you could make in a million different possible ways. Food for thought or food for the mere delight of savoring words. ⁣ So, say your words are a chicken fillet, a cut of boneless meat. You might just want to sear it on a pan and serve it with a pinch of salt or spices, a dash of olive oil, and a parsley leaf on top, and call it a dish. ⁣ And it’s gonna be good. I know it will. I like that sometimes. Simple, looking like the safest choice, but still good. ⁣ But I don’t know about you. I find a Schnitzel more interesting. Bread crumb coated, fried crisp and golden, crunching in my teeth, melting on my tongue, making me talk with my mouth full cause even though I want to savor the words in silence, at the same time I want to pronounce them out loud to have a full experience. Add some potato to it and mayonnaise to dip it in, make it smooth, and wow. The taste. ⁣ That’s how I think writing ceases to be just writing and gets seasoned to become literature. When you’ve got texture, flavor, memory, balance, taste, explosion. That’s how I like my words. Served on a literary dish you’ll remember and crave and ask for more because you had such an amazing sensorial experience with their words when they got into your mouth. Because the aftertaste of those words lingered longer in your brain’s papillae after you chewed them in your wild phonetic degustation. ⁣ Now, how do you do it? ⁣ 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁𝘀 How do you add that texture and taste to your writing? How do you create that explosion of senses with your words and sentences? And if you don’t write, when was the last time you had such a meal from a book? And what book was it? ⁣ 👊🏻 Beard
It started with a real story in watercolor, captions and balloons. It was about an artist who changed the world of comic books and superheroes, a writer with a brilliant mind for super stories, and a battle of rights supported by the power of storytelling and a loyal readership. I still don’t know how the story ends, tho. The last page of the book was far from being the last chapter of the still ongoing war, unfortunately. ⁣ A few days later, I entered a wardrobe that was a portal to the amazing mind of a writer and his reading life. Heard his ideas about reading, stole some of them, learned new ways to travel through books. I highly recommend you do the same. Still walking in the same side of road, I heard a best-selling author’s meditations about his personal library, while he’s moving, and I listened carefully to his advocation for the vital role of libraries. ⁣ Totally unexpectedly, I swerved and fell into an America with gods and magic and choices and disturbing scenes and ironing fates, all that rolling down a hill of storytelling geniality. Meanwhile, I visited the past of Greek philosophers, bored to death with some of them, learned to hate Socrates but understand him, and loved Aristotles, still not knowing exactly why. ⁣ The last part of that trip led me to a quest for writing with a theme or finding themes to write, something I’m recently obsessed with, and the exact reason for a turning point in my writing journey. And then, convinced by the author of a profanity-riddled self help book, I’m closing the month with trying to calm the f down. ⁣ That was my reading month. Here are the books I’ve read: ⁣ • Superman: The Unauthorized Biography, by Glen Weldon • Reading Life, by C. S. Lewis • Packing my Library, by Alfredo Manguel • American Gods, by Neil Gaiman • Ancient Greek Philosophy, Canterbury Classics • Writing Your Story’s Theme, by K.M. Weiland • Calm The F Down, by Sarah Knight ⁣ 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁𝘀 How was your month in books? Can you find patterns and connections in your reading choices? Can you link what you’ve read and give us a summary of how this month felt in your reading life and mind? If not, why? ⁣ 👊🏻 Beard
Sometimes restarting the system is what it takes to fix it. ⁣ I have over five hundred unread books on my Kindle and shelves. It’s got completely out of control and I’m FREAKING OUT! No, I’m not. I’m kidding. But I do wanna do something about it. I can’t just stay cool and live by that talk about Taleb and Eco and the antilibrary. ⁣ I mean, yes, knowing I still have a lot to read is keeping me “intellectually curious and humble”, for sure, but at the same time, f— it. I don’t want a big antilibrary in my life. You know? ⁣ And the cherry on top is this crazy urge to reread some books too. Knowing I’ll have different ideas and conclusions and knowing I’ll read them better now that my writing mind has evolved. And also because I want to read them better. ⁣ So, here’s the thing: those books are standing there, waiting for me to read them. Each one looking at me like a pet frozen in a pleading face crying for my hands to pick them up to read them. I’ll defrost them from this whole frozen state and free their ink and words back to life to finally let them rest in peace again as soon as I close their back cover with ideas boiling in my mind and a burial speech written on an Instagram caption. ⁣ Let’s begin our works then. Or should I say, restart them? Yea, more like it. ⁣ 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁𝘀 So... how would you start your reading life if you had just realized you can read anything you want in a better way? ⁣ 👊🏻 Beard
Saturday morning. I’ll finish American Gods. Reading it gave me a different perspective of Gaiman’s work. It’s interesting to see how good he is with his narrative and use of vivid language. He’s a great storyteller, and I like his diction, even on the parts where he brings a strong unease with his choice of words. I’m still trying to get over a scene at the beginning of the book that I called “the invagination scene”. If you read it, you know what I mean. If not, it’s nothing related to cells or developmental biology, of course. But the premise of the book is very good, gods trying to live in America brought by immigrants who believe in them, walking around disguised as ordinary people. Gaiman can balance magic and mundane well enough to bring wittiness and criticism in this book while we keep hooked to know whatever will happen to Shadow and his job as an emissary of a Norse god after a shitty series of episodes that bring him to this point. ⁣ ■ Have you read American Gods? What do you think of Neil Gaiman’s work? ⁣ – João
A few days ago, I asked you what makes a good reader. I’ve got many responses for that but I wanted to start with three of them. (1) The adjective does not apply to readers, cause one is either a reader or is not, (2) There’s no such thing as a good reader, and (3) “A reader is a reader is a reader. No competition and no good or bad”. That was not Gertrude Stein, by the way, but it was still an interesting answer. ⁣ Although I like those responses and kinda see what they meant, I have to say that there IS such thing as a good or bad reader, unfortunately. And it’s not about competition, it’s about competENCE. The ability to do something efficiently. And it’s also not about reading a lot of books, but reading a lot FROM books. ⁣ Here’s what makes you a good reader in our opinion: ⁣ • You read with all your senses, your attention, and mindfulness, and you reflect on the words you eat from your fovea to digest them in your brain. Then you absorb the nutrients of what you’ve read to build muscles of thinking and enjoyment. ⁣ • You grasp the idea of a book with your best reflexes and abilities just like Mr. Miyagi catches a fly with his chopsticks. Or maybe not that fast, which makes you hungry for more knowledge and mind growth so you can do that as a natural skill and not a trick. ⁣ • You read and think critically, which means you discover information and ideas within a text and you’re able to evaluate them for deciding what to accept and believe. ⁣ • You love reading and you enjoy it so much that you see reading as a good habit in your life and a natural part of your daily routine. You understand its benefits and you allow yourself a daily intake of it as a daily elixir. ⁣ • You immerse yourself in what you read and the words are not words anymore, they’re doors to worlds and characters and ideas and knowledge. You swim in a pool of intellectual opportunities. ⁣ • You share your passion with the world and everyone around you and you try to encourage other people to read more and better, just because it’s GOOD. ⁣ Or so I think… ⁣ ■ Well, would add something else? And tell me about what you’re reading right now, how is it affecting you? ⁣ – João
I noticed an interesting thing about my idea of writing after all this time. Something that is changing the way I’m sharpening my tools or conjuring my muses. Whenever I ask people why they write, the most common answer is either because they want to tell a story they wanted to read or because they have these stories inside their heads. That’s good, but not enough for me. I love storytelling, too, but I don’t have a story that I want to tell just for the sake of it, if that makes any sense. I think storytelling is just the means for an end. ⁣ Writing for me is not about “l’art pour l’art”, art for the sake of art. Maybe poetry is, but even poems shouldn’t be like “a worm chewing its own tail” in my opinion. There has to be a reason, a consequence, a meaning, maybe a moral. Something to think about, you know. And, for me, also something out of the common box-checking themes in vogue. I’m not here for that. Not in the world for that. ⁣ I want to write things like the story of a madman who thinks he’s a knight and makes you question which is better between living a life you create or accepting reality as it is, without thinking that’s crazy. I wanna write something like an interesting psychological monologue of an overwhelmed woman who kills a cockroach and starts thinking about her existence. Or the story of the cockroach itself and how transitioning from a man to a grotesque bug nullifies his whole existence. I wanna write the story of a guy who dies without achieving anything and then invites you to an amazing posthumous discussion about his life, making you think about how you wanna live YOUR life after what you learn from his misery. I wanna write about a hundred years of generations and episodes that make you think about changes and the inevitable growth of the world for better or for worse. ⁣ Things like that, you know? ⁣ ■ What about you? Why do you write? Don’t say it’s because you love it or because you have stories you want to tell. Tell me the real WHY you’re writing a story. ⁣ And if you’re not a writer, just a reader, still important, tell me this, When you read, what kind of theme makes you love an author for? ⁣ – João
Before you even finish reading this, you’ll be looking at reading from a different perspective. But first, tell me something, What value do you find in your current read? ⁣ Thousands of words printed on a piece of paper can become a huge blurred stain if you squint. And if you focus on a single word on a text, all words around it may seem to disappear. Reading is an illusion. Not as in “fake”, but as a thing that is likely to be differently perceived or interpreted by the senses. And if you expand that idea, reading can lead anywhere you want. ⁣ Let that rest a little. Let’s think about the aphorism “time is money” now, but also from a different perspective. Think that time is your medium of exchange, a currency, like in that movie with JT. Let’s say you pay for everything with time and reading costs a few minutes of your limited account of hours. ⁣ A common thing I hear about the reading habit is that people don’t have time for it. And I get it. Life is crazy and unfair sometimes when it comes to time. And I know it makes sense to say we can’t afford to stop and sit for a precious while with a book that has nothing to do with our lives. When you waste your money on things you don’t need, you may end up without money for paying your bills. The same happens with time. When you waste it, it’s gone. I know. ⁣ So, yea, we only have 24 hours a day, and a huge part of that “money” is already allocated in a very tight budget. And we can’t ask for a raise. Therefore, what we do with the few minutes left in that budget has to be wisely chosen. But we all know that reading has a lot of benefits, and I definitely find it worth it to spend some minutes a day with it. I do. ⁣ I’m not gonna tell you there’s a right or wrong book to read, tho. I do think you should choose your reads wisely, even if it’s only a story to entertain you. But what I want you to think about is this: what if I told you you can control your senses to change how you read any book you want and what you perceive from it, and, by doing that, you’d be spending just a few minutes of your “money” on a priceless treasure? ⁣ • What do you think? ⁣ 👊🏻 João
Multitasking is a fallacy. Don’t try to convince me otherwise. Every time I try to do it, I end up falling in demise. Rhyming today I challenge you to read a list of things you cannot do. I mean, I think you can’t read and do those things, but tell me which one you don’t think is true. ⁣ • Reading while eating a mouthful of a very crunchy cereal without milk ⁣ • Reading while watching an action movie with pieces of popcorn getting lodged between your teeth and hurting your gum ⁣ • Reading and watching reels with random physically fit people collab-dancing to “I Like to Move It” ⁣ • Reading and riding a bicycle and listening to “Don’t Stop Believin’” by Journey, and waiting an eternity for the part you really know from the chorus ⁣ • Reading while eating a piece of cake in the morning after a fun night at the bar when you may or may not have climbed the counter to finally sing out loud “don’t stop! Believin’! Hold on to that feeeeelin’”, and thinking you’re lucky you’re still alive! ⁣ • Reading during a lobotomy (having or performing) or randomly scrolling social media ⁣ • Reading and trying to run the first 1K of a 5K to which you haven’t signed up for, but you think you can run anyway and who needs a stupid number to run a competition, but panting after 2 minutes of clumsily jogging ⁣ Let me know in the comments below. Which one you can do? I challenge you. Later today, I’m going to share a post on the blog about making time for reading. Some suggestions involve multitasking, but I’ll give you a very simple solution. ⁣ 👊🏻 Beardy
a list of arguments in defense of lists ⁣ There is a certain magic in a number of items consecutively written one below the other. A secret that only a few people know. And if you dig deeper, you’ll find lists in every great thinker’s works and habits. Also, we all tend to begin writing or speaking without much of a plan or structure. But lists can become a very strong device to make our writing and speaking more concise, effective, and structured when we need that. Because the human brain loves structures and because we’re all accustomed to storytelling for retaining information or enjoying a piece of writing or a speech, a list can work as a map to keep us on track. We usually call that kind of list an outline and it’s a lifesaver. ⁣ I wrote about lists in the blog today. A list of six arguments in defense of lists. Go check it out. ⁣ And I suggested in the post that it’s interesting to have a reference list of concepts from a book we read, quotes, historical facts, a timeline of anything, books related to a topic, thoughts we had while reading, songs, characters, worlds, interesting words, methods, ideas, etc. We never know as writers when that is gonna be useful. ⁣ So, do you keep any kind of list like that? Tell me more about it in the comments. ⁣ 👊🏻 João ⁣ . . . 🏷 #beardbetweenthelines #writer #lists #indefenseoflists #makinglists #newblogpost #writing #onwriting #ideas #bookstagram #readstagram #amwriting #blogger #bookblogger

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