An Overdue Visit

Hello! Is there anyone alive out there?

I kind of miss this cozy space. I remember sitting on the floor of my high school bedroom and sliding the patio door open all the way, the screen, too, so that I sat half-inside, half-outside. I remember stacking two memory boxes to fashion a desk and logging into Blogger, excited to add to this creaky site. I scoured Tumblr and Flickr for photos and paired them with quotes from my latest reads, and though at times I thought it was clever, more often I thought it was rather unoriginal, but I loved it anyway -- this post-reading ritual, this tidy exercise of closure -- so that insecurity, always ready with its insulting questions and comments, was readily silenced.

It has been five years since, and about two years since I moved from Blogger to Bookswept.com. Regardless of platform, so much of the blogging landscape has changed. I suspect that its long form expression is no longer tolerated; we prefer brevity, captions not paragraphs, and we prefer a continuous stream of new, skimming not reading. I kind of miss the old, messy intimacy of blogging; less likes, hearts, followers and hashtags, but also less rigid and urgent because of it.

We now shape our content to cater to platforms designed and controlled by private corporations, i.e. Instagram, Twitter, etc. If we are to create, we seem to prefer to follow rules and guidelines, to select from finite options, and to display our content in the same way as everyone else.

Of course, there is much to appreciate. I love how effortless it now feels to create, sometimes just a few taps. I love that my community expands to include people and places that are absent from my normal day-to-day, offering a peek into lifestyles, priorities and aesthetics that are not my own.

I offer no conclusion, except that I will keep writing, and reading, so I hope you will keep writing, too.

Cheers,
Yuri

Bookswept.com

Bookswept has finally moved into its own place. So long, Blogger. Thank you to all of the readers. I feel like I started Bookswept so long ago but I’m just now getting started. I hope to see you at the new place. Welcome!

Cheers, 

Yuri

i’m alive, again

I promise that this is the last of a short series (see the original i'm alive). Bookswept is in the midst of growing into something a little bit better than what it is now. Thank you for being such a patient bunch.

Into the Wild

"He wasn't antisocial — he always had friends, and everybody liked him — but he could go off and entertain himself for hours. He didn't seem to need toys or friends. He could be alone without being lonely."

Into the Wild, pg. 107
By Jon Krakauer
Published 1996

 

The Heart is a Lonely Hunter

"He was like a man who had served a term in prison or had been to Harvard College or had lived for a long time with foreigners in South America. He was like a person who had been somewhere that other people are not likely to go or had done something that others are not apt to do." 

The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, p. 21
By Carson McCullers
Published 1940

 

Beatrice and Virgil

"Colonialism is a terrible bane for a people upon whom it is imposed, but a blessing for a language. English's drive to exploit the new and the alien, its zeal in robbing words from other languages, its incapability to feel qualms over the matter, its museum-size overabundance of vocabulary, its shoulder-shrug approach to spelling, its don't-worry-be-happy concern for grammar - the result was a language whose colour and wealth Henry loved."

Beatrice and Virgil, p. 23
By Yann Martel
Published 2010

The Age of Miracles

"It requires a certain kind of bravery, I suppose, to choose the status quo. There's a certain boldness to inaction." 

The Age of Miracles, p. 83
By Karen Thompson Walker
Published 2012