Art lover. Italian living in England. Wife of @knightandicon
England, United Kingdom
- Tweets 11,121
- Following 2,437
- Followers 38,860
- Likes 62,874
Are you “burned out” or are you having a reasonable reaction to a never-ending barrage of bad news which you can do very little about.
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I tried to read Crime and Punishment at the age of seven because of him.
ALT Gromit reading Crime and Punishment in A Close Shave
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The other day I was in a coffee shop in London with my husband. The waitress sounded Italian, so I asked her, in Italian and in my northern Italian accent, whether she was. She eyed me haughtily for a second, then replied, “Actually, I am Sicilian.”
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I want a Hallmark movie about a woman who dumps her bigoted small-town boyfriend, moves to a big city, lands a dream job and discovers the magic of Christmas by living in community with people of different creeds and cultures.
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Here’s one feminist life rule of mine: I never judge a man based on how he treats women when they are coddling or praising him. Look closely at how a man reacts when a woman displeases him, stands up to him, or draws a boundary with him, and you will find out who he really is.
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Me as a teenager: once I am an adult, I will stay up as late as I want!
Me as an adult: I’m going to tuck myself in at 9 pm, as a treat.
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A 30-year-old who refuses to learn a new skill because “it’s too late in life” is passing on the opportunity to become a 60-year-old with 30 years of experience.
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I love public libraries because they are built on the principle that books are so important and so necessary to human flourishing that access to them cannot depend on your income.
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Instead of calling your house “cluttered”, you can call it “studio Ghibli-inspired”.
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I tried to read Crime and Punishment at the age of seven because of him.
ALT Gromit reading Crime and Punishment
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This bird looks like he is about to solve a murder in the English countryside using only, “My little grey cells, monsieur.”
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It would be fun if public libraries were well-funded and open in the evenings and we built a culture where it’s normal to gather at the library after work and browse the shelves and chat about the latest books and read the Saturday night away.
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If you visit Europe and don’t speak the local language, just be polite. Once, in Venice, I saw an American couple yelling at a fruit seller who didn’t speak English. I translated, they asked me for directions to their hotel, and I happily sent them in the very opposite direction.
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Yes. The grocery shop is within walking distance, I get to see beautiful historical buildings on the way there, I don’t fear getting shot while outside, and I have the time to wander around town because I don’t need to work 24/7 just to afford basic healthcare. 🤷🏻♀️
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“Hustle hard and become highly skilled!” Why, so the goddess Athena can grow jealous of my skills and turn me into a spider? No thanks.
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“English teachers should not indoctrinate kids with politics and only teach them about literature.” Teaching A Christmas Carol without discussing its anti-poverty themes is impossible. Literature is political.
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Do you realise what a radical thing libraries are? Publicly-funded spaces where you can access information, countless books, and the internet even if you are homeless? There is a reason why people in power want to convince you they are superfluous and should be defunded.
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Don’t give a hard time to parents who bring their loud toddlers to the library. Public libraries are community spaces. Outside of designated quiet areas, they are not quiet environments. Learn to share public spaces with kids for the sake of raising a literate next generation.
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She heard my Venetian accent and was like, “You and I, we are not the same.” 😂
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“In order to write you need to read a lot.” Yes, but you need to read like a writer. You need to pay attention to how different authors build tension, describe characters, transition from scene to scene. This is the one, most crucial practice that will improve your writing.
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My Italian caveat to the “keep busy to keep bad thoughts away” idea is that it doesn’t have to mean being a Protestant workaholic. You can keep busy making meals for your loved ones, talking to your neighbours, reading books. Keep the darkness out by being too busy enjoying life.
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Matilda did not escape her abusive household on her own. She was guided first by a great librarian, and later by a great teacher. Matilda is not a story about the importance of being the cleverest, but about the importance of finding people who believe in you.
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I’ve met so many people who “hated history” in school because it was taught to them as a list of battle dates, but fell in love with it as adults when they read a witty, well-written historical biography.
History is not a list of dates; it’s about people.
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Women’s magazines keep bombarding me with tutorials on how to straighten my hair so I can “make men fall in love”; yet I can’t find *one single tutorial* on how to turn my hair into snakes so I can petrify all flirty men and have the time and headspace to finish my novel.
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As a teenager, my vocabulary increased a lot by reading 19th century literature I could not instantly understand.
Not everything ought to be easy. Taking the time to read something challenging is how you develop your mind.
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Many classic children’s books are quite “dark” because their authors understood the importance of teaching kids how to confront the dark side of human nature. Surrounding yourself only with “wholesome” content will make you less empathetic, and more narrow-minded.
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Every generation should read The Lord of the Rings and learn that men are allowed to show affection, that power corrupts, and that happiness does not come from being a ruler but from baking potatoes and snoozing in an armchair by the fire in your cosy Hobbit hole.
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Can someone explain a thing to me, a clueless European? There is Disney World in Paris and I went there as a small child, but it wasn’t a big deal. I have never met a European “Disney adult”. Why is Disneyland in America so different? Why are some people obsessed with it?
don't hate me, but what is the deal with grown people with no kids going to disney world all the time? do you guys know about europe?!?!?!
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Society’s obsession with romantic love is part of what fuels our modern culture of loneliness. A single person, no matter how beloved, cannot fulfil all our social and emotional needs. We need to rediscover the vital value of friendship and community.
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Children love books about boarding schools because they love the idea of living with their friends in a single building where magical things happen. A school is just a plot device to create what many humans (young and old) crave: a walkable, close-knit community.
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One recurring Twitter experience is watching people tweet things like, “This fantasy book promotes puppy-killing!” And then I go read said book, and the puppy-killer turns out to be the supervillain of the story.
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I say this as an Italian: regardless of whether you want to be a parent, children are people who belong in restaurants and cafes and libraries, and wanting them out of all public spaces has become far too disturbingly normalised in the Anglosphere.
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Sure, getting rejected by your crush hurts, but have you ever contacted your old school teacher who was a life-changing, Miss Honey-style mentor figure to you and found out she has no interest in keeping in touch with her adult students?
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The goal of a woman’s life is *not* to be a wife and mother. It’s to dramatically gatecrash a christening party swathed in a raven-black cloak and cackle, “I TOO HAVE A GIFT FOR THE PRINCESS!”
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Get your girlfriend what she truly wants this Christmas: the complete Clothbound Classics Penguin Collection.
ALT Picture of the complete collection
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Mary Shelley did try to warn us about hubristic STEM bros who make strange, impulsive experiments and then watch helplessly as their creation destroys itself at the expense of ordinary people.
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Enough talk about “bikini bodies”. Fall is almost here; now you need a body with a detachable pumpkin head that you can throw at your foes riding on horseback.
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Completely obsessed with this Reddit theory that Pennywise and Mary Poppins are members of the same monster species.
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The issue with people “letting AI do the reading for them” is that a society that does not read is a society that can’t think critically. It can be easily manipulated by authoritarians. When we don’t read we are less informed, more dependent on tech tools, and more compliant.
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Sir, that’s my emotional support stack of blank notebooks which I will never use because I’m too afraid of ruining them.
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Vampires have it exactly right: find the sleeping schedule that works for you, avoid excessive sun exposure, and only show up at someone’s house if explicitly invited.
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Call me old-fashioned, but I believe some intimate things should be reserved for marriage. A man should wait until his wedding night to untie the green ribbon around his wife’s neck and let her head tumble to the ground.
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I grew up in the north of Italy. I used to go shopping in Milan and holiday on the Amalfi coast. I used to lounge about in the sun doing nothing other than drinking coffee. My standards are too high for this uncomfortable trad Protestant lifestyle to hold any appeal for me.
So you're telling me you don't wanna get married, have 9 kids, move to the country, buy a homestead, get cows & chickens, grow your own food, drink raw milk all day and live happily ever after?
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Here‘s a secret: you will never be fully ready to do the things that scare you. Don’t waste your life waiting for ideal conditions that never come. Write that novel now. Start that project today. It will never get easier, but you can choose to get braver.
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You should only worry about a “beach body” if you are a Belgian detective with a fine moustache whose summer holiday in Devon has been interrupted by a grisly murder.
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We need to reject this modern idea that marriage means spending all your time with your spouse. Let’s go back to tradition: you spend six months of the year with your spouse in the underworld, and the other six above-ground with your mother.
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It’s very creepy how some people are saying Turning Red is “inappropriate for kids” because it talks about periods. I was 11 when I had my first period. It was part of my childhood.
The biological reality of little girls should not be a taboo.
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You can buy any book you are looking for on the internet. But we need physical, independent bookshops because that is where you discover the books you were not looking for, and never knew you needed.
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Tom Bombadil is my favourite LOTR character. He’s so weird not a single movie adaptation has tried to include him, and I respect him for it.
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What’s the point of giving kids a childhood full of whimsy and wonder and imagination if we then demand they give it all up once they‘re adults? Childhood should plant the seeds of a person’s sense of wonder, which should be cultivated over a lifetime.
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I don’t know who needs to hear this today, but please never stop being excited about the things you love. Your enthusiasm *will* annoy some people, and that’s great. It will help you weed out the people who don’t value the gift of your uncynical, unabashed happiness.
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“You should have confronted them!” The American man was twice my size and they both had very aggressive body language. I could not escalate conflict in front of a shaken, elderly fruit seller. I deescalated and sent them on a beautiful scenic tour, to do some soul-searching.
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Children love books about boarding schools because they love the idea of living with their friends in a single building where magical things happen. A school is just a plot device to create what many humans (young and old) crave: a walkable, close-knit community.
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Make art. Write bad drafts and edit them without fear. Paint pictures even if they don’t come out well. Try again. And again. Remind yourself, every day, that anything worth doing is worth doing badly.
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STEM and the arts are so often pitted against each other nowadays. It would seem nonsensical to Leonardo da Vinci, who was both an artist and an engineer. We need science to improve life, and art to give meaning to it. It’s a partnership, not a war.
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Do people like playing Stardew Valley and Animal Crossing because they like selling turnips, or do they simply crave to experience what it’s like living in a pretty, close-knit, walkable community.
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I just read a blog post outlining a skincare routine which involves ten steps and *thirty* products, and I will say this for the Hungarian vampire countesses of yore: when they suggested bathing in virgin blood, at least they kept it simple and stuck to one ingredient.
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In 2025, I am going to make art. I am going to write bad drafts and edit them without fear. I’m going to take joy in creating things even if they are not perfect. Every day I will remind myself that anything worth doing is worth doing badly.
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Being vaccinated does NOT mean you can attend any social event. You also need the patronage of the esteemed Lady Catherine de Bourgh.
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Women only want one thing, and it’s the complete Clothbound Classics Penguin collection.
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Here‘s a secret: you will never be fully ready to do the things that scare you. Don’t waste your life waiting for ideal conditions that never come. Write that novel now. Start that project today. It will never get easier, but you can choose to get braver.
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My most Italian nonna opinion is that children are people and we have a collective responsibility to welcome them in public spaces. You can’t expect them to act exactly like adults, either. Their brains are not yet fully developed; you need to be more tolerant.
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Stop glamourising “hustle culture” and start glamourising the Frog and Toad lifestyle.
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It’s essential that you, as an adult, free yourself of whatever trauma the school system might have given you and realise that learning is a joy and a privilege and that curiosity should forever be a core part of your life.
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Having a non-digital, hands-on hobby (woodworking, drawing, sewing, knitting) can be great for your mental health. Social media is destroying these hobbies by persuading people that making things is only worthwhile if they look good on camera and bring clout.
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Constantly buying fast fashion is unsustainable. It’s time to normalise more eco-friendly lifestyles, such as wearing the same tattered wedding dress every day while sitting in a crumbling manor plotting revenge.
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The secret to life is to stay curious. Learn a new skill, get into Russian literature, start gardening, cultivate a niche interest. We live in a beautiful and fascinating world; do not let routine and problems and to-do lists destroy your sense of wonder.
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When someone tells you they have not read a famous classic book, instead of saying, “I can’t believe you haven’t read it!”, you can say, “I wish I was you and I could read it again for the first time.”
Instead of making people feel inadequate, show them the joys of reading.
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Annual reminder that A Christmas Carol is about a rich man who redeems himself not just by buying a few presents, but by giving healthcare, a raise and better working conditions to his employee.
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Forever thinking about the mom who once tweeted she wanted her kids to read “clean classics” instead of “dirty YA novels full of sex and vulgar jokes” and that was why she‘d just bought them a copy of The Canterbury Tales.
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When you start reading, life becomes bearable again. No matter what you are going through, you’ll be reminded that other humans have felt what you feel, and written about it. You will learn that you are part of a world far bigger and brighter than the darkness in your mind.
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“Don’t buy books, just use the library.” I can’t underline library books. I can’t write notes on the margins. I can’t keep the book and revisit my notes two years later.
Libraries and bookshops are friends, not rivals. There is a place for both.
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The best thing my Italian upbringing taught me is how to enjoy life. I will lounge on a sofa sipping espresso with no guilt about being “unproductive”. I will light candles, make risotto, and romanticise my dinner.
The secret to La Dolce Vita is believing that you deserve joy.
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It’s good to love mathematics and also makeup. It’s good to read the classics and watch Muppet movies. It’s good to see Shakespeare plays and collect graphic novels. It’s good to be curious about the world and open to new things without self-imposed limitations.
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In order to write you must live! You must go out into the world and experience tragedies and triumphs, beauty and betrayals. Dante watched the woman he loved marry another man and die young, then he was exiled from Florence. That, I’m afraid, is how you write The Divine Comedy.
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Reading fiction is not just a pleasant pastime. It teaches us empathy. It puts us in the shoes of those who are different from us. It’s a form of resistance against the forces of ignorance and bigotry and lack of imagination that tear our world apart.
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“Traditional gender roles are inevitable because girls naturally play with baby dolls.” Sir, I played with gnome plushies engaged in cycles of blood feuds based on ninth-century Icelandic sagas. My toy sword sent 23 gnome chieftains to Valhalla before my seventh summer.
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When people say they wish girls “behaved more like the ladies of yore” I assume they want them to be like Countess D’Aulnoy, who jumped out of a window to escape arrest, became a spy, and supported her illegitimate daughters by writing fairy tales about magical green dogs.
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Reading fiction instead of just self-help books is vital because fiction is not about “implementing key insights”, it’s about empathising with characters living lives outside of your own, by using your imagination. It is a singularly human activity.
Reading books is now a waste of time.
AI reasoning models can distill key insights and tell you exactly how to implement them based on everything they know about you.
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Annual reminder that A Christmas Carol is about a rich man who redeems himself not just by buying some presents, but by giving healthcare, a raise and better working conditions to his employees.
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Don’t turn reading for pleasure into yet another chore. If the book you feel you “should” read does not grip you, put it down. Pick up another one. Sustaining your lifelong love of literature is far more important than finishing every book you start.
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Being in a happy relationship is making me reflect on how unfairly our society treats single people. Finding the right person and settling down is seen as an “accomplishment”, but whether it happens or not is often out of your control. It’s mostly luck.
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The opening pages of LOTR are so funny. There are Hobbits sharing gossip and gardening tips at the inn. Bilbo is receiving parcels and organising his birthday party. You expect this to be a cosy mystery. You could never, ever see the rest of the story coming.
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Whenever I see these stressed helicopter parents, I think fondly of my Italian boomer parents who let me read all their books unchecked as they lounged around their house full of nude oil paintings while sipping espresso and somehow smoking three cigarettes at once.
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The days between Christmas and New Year’s Eve are a liminal space. Lose track of time. Spend all day in your pyjamas. Organise your wardrobe and accidentally stumble into Narnia to have tea with a faun. There are no rules.
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I genuinely thought adult life would involve fewer emails and more of this:
ALT Picture from Busy Busy People by Richard Scarry
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Sir, those are my emotional support notebooks I will never use because the are too beautiful and I don’t want to ruin them.
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I think many writers get stuck because they try to write a novel without having practiced writing much before. They are not at ease with personification, descriptive body language, transitions, dialogue, etc. It’s like trying to paint a fresco with zero preparatory drawings.
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Bookshops don’t just exist so you can buy the books you want. They also exist so you can browse around and discover the books you did not know you needed.
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For me the most relatable 19th century vampire is Carmilla, who never gets out of bed before noon, can’t stand more than ten minutes of exercise, and awkwardly tries to seduce her victim-crush by telling her weird things about caterpillars she read in an encyclopaedia.
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The weird thing about this pandemic is that we’re meeting new people over Zoom but only seeing the upper half of their bodies. For all we know we could be meeting centaurs and mermaids.
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Shakespeare’s work is very accessible when taught well and experienced as actual plays. This being said, trying to understand hard things is how you expand your mind. It is how you become educated. Not everything should be easy.
I’m a former English major, and I strongly disagree. Shakespeare is inaccessible and alienating to the vast majority of children and, frankly, to many adults. Lit teachers have a romantic attachment to it that’s deeply detrimental to the learning of contemporary students.
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My wish for you is that you will find a book series that grips you as much as your childhood favourites, that makes you want to stay up all night reading it as though you were a kid again, falling in love with the magic of stories for the first time.
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“I read this book because you told me it’s one of your favourites” is a love language.
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I will say it again: is is essential that you, as an adult, free yourself of whatever trauma the school system might have given you and realise that learning is a joy and a privilege and that curiosity should forever be a core part of your life.
Norm Macdonald; don't let school ruin your love of reading
ALT “I hated everything in school. I think it kills people for books. My kid was having trouble with this book, and it was a great book. So I said, ‘Why don't you try to read it once just for pleasure because you're reading it knowing that you'll be asked questions. You can't enjoy anything then.’ It's like if you went to a movie and they said, ‘Oh, there's going to be a giant quiz the next day,’ it'd be very hard to enjoy that movie because you'll be trying to figure out what questions they'll be asking. Of course the books weren't written for that purpose. They weren't written to be taught in school or analyzed in a literary way or anything like that. School killed me for books. I really believe school stops people from reading books later in life.”
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Summer for a woman shouldn’t be all about losing weight and being sexy and turning men on. It should be more about enjoying the sunshine on the desert island of Aeaea and turning men into pigs.
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