Happy Birthday! As someone who is 20 years older than that, all that you describe still applies! I’m still working full time in a demanding professional career, married with 2 dogs; children and now grandchildren nearby and squeezing in all the small daily joys I can—while staying healthy. It’s not any easier and I haven’t found that secret formula except to say, we all do our best to prioritize what’s important during the day, a season and that those priorities continue to change. Reading grounds me and provides me with great joy and reminds me of the larger picture of life!
Thank you, Cyndi! It’s so interesting to read your note and be reminded that even though so many of us live in anticipation of some future moment when everything is clear, settled and easy… life just doesn’t work that way. So, you better do what you want to do NOW and make it work.
Petya, happy birthday! Everything you spoke of resonates with me. I am a few years older but not much so we are in a similar stage of life where time and aging take on a new focus. This space and broader community have been good for my soul. It has allowed me to grow, to feel, and to change.
This year I see my reading shifting. I have a couple of projects I am reading for. One here on Substack, the other a personal learning project. Beyond that I am allowing myself to read for joy. For the last few years I got into a routine that almost became performative. Oh, I have to read this prize winner or that best seller because everyone is talking about it. There can be value in that at times but this past week I crowd-sourced ideas for a genre I love and it was amazing! So many great recommendations in genre fiction and it made me happy to have a community who enjoys those same things.
I am continually on the lookout for fresh voices. I believe reading the classics and the critical works of literature is important. But I also need new and unheard voices. Voices in translation. Voices that are just a whisper at the moment but l seeking an ear. Voices that make me think and rethink who I am.
Love you my friend. Keep writing and inspiring and growing and reading!
Thank you so much, Matt! Your words and your friendship mean so much to me! It feels so liberating to have figured out a way to do for yourself something that you didn’t think was no longer in the cards. Taking none of it for granted.
Happy birthday! Forty-five, eh? Where was I then and, more to the point, what was I reading? Hmmmm. Ah, I was in the same house I'm in now and working a job I hated, but reading just as much as I do now. It's my constant, my love, my escape. And right now, at 54, it's better than ever! And that, my dear friend, is largely down to the online book space. I didn't know back then that I could write about books and make videos about books and lead others through books. Since leaving uni in 1998 and joining the big bad world, I'd been reading pretty much alone, with no one to talk to about what I was reading or to listen to about what they were reading. And now, look at us go!
That’s a great point. Some life events have the book I was reading embedded in the memory—the just fine audiobook I was listening to when I had a (minor) accident—but I need to consult “the list” to see what I was reading on a particular birthday.
I’m proud of finding joy in books that I’m reading as part of a writing project. In the past that sometimes felt like a slog—but now I know it doesn’t have to.
I want you to know that I get so much joy from each and every one of your posts, Petya.
I relate to all of it. My own reading life has improved so much. And I am 75!
I have always loved reading, collecting books, thinking about books, talking about books, making notes about books, remembering books. And now I feel that I can really savour it all, that it is not just what I do… “she likes to read”…
You have made me realize the sheer wonder and richness of it all.
Secondly, this piece spoke to me in many ways, as a recovering over-sharer! I love the idea of our curated reading life as a way to stand alongside others, and I'll be mulling over this for the coming days and weeks!
I am not quite sure how the Performative Reading conversation started but I am so over it. There is so much beauty in doing things in community or doing them alone-together. I keep thinking of all the commonly accepted advice around habit formation that somehow doesn’t apply to reading. Why not?! If someone wants to get in better shape and buys a gym membership or new running shoes, we don’t mock them for not running every day. We encourage them to take the next step… Anyway. I am so glad to be reading alongside you! ❤️
Happy Birthday! Wow. Everything you wrote totally resonated with me. I am 58 and a photographer and reader, post-menopausal, started my HRT journey about 3 years ago. I can tell you it is actually quite life changing. It's great that you started early. HRT gave me the energy to take my life back quite honestly. Thank you for putting The Social Photo on my radar. Definitely going to put my eyes on that one. Enjoy your day!
Thank you so much for your note and I am so happy to hear that you are feeling better. I am still in the phase where I look and feel 5 months pregnant but I am told this is common and I will even out soon. God bless my husband for being emotionally mature enough to help me through it.
The Social Photo was reissued last year but the book was originally published a few years back and deals with some of the early debates around social photography. I think it needs a bigger update since so much has changed but I still found it very helpful as a framework around how to think about sharing online.
Happy birthday, Petya! Your post struck a chord with me (just shared it with my IRL book group in Minneapolis—we're reading All the Beauty in the World, which I highly recommend). I have so enjoyed your posts and personal insights. They are not to be missed, much like Maria Popova's Marginalian. I hope you are able to take a day to celebrate yourself. (For my own bday earlier this month, I had a day date with myself, perusing a bookstore, journaling at a cafe, treasure-hunting at a vintage shop, and even took in a $5 matinee to finally see Hamnet.) Cheers to you and many more birthdays, reading friend!!
yes, i think you’re quite right about vernacular reading/writing — and for many, the associated photography of the moments spent reading. i like your way of wording it. happy birthday! 💕
Happy Birthday! And thank you for this lovely post! This will be sticking with me: "You can almost always connect a book to the life that was happening around it: who you were arguing with, what you were afraid of, what you were longing for. In that sense, the living becomes one with the reading, and the reading becomes the memory of the life."
Happy birthday! I also turned 45 this week (17th) and started HRT last week. A rite of passage, I suppose.
I'm building a concept project that I hope to pursue for the rest of the year: exploring nature through poetry and prose. I'm building myself a reading list that balances fiction with nonfiction, poetry, and nature journaling. I've been enamored with nature writing forever, but I've been inspired by your projects to formalize this into a study.
Happy Birthday, Petya! 🎂 and welcome to the HRT club 😄 as a just-turned-53 year old woman, I am a little ahead of you, but SO MUCH of what you say here resonates with me. I spent so many years worrying about getting older and feeling self-consious and it's been such a revelation to realise that I feel so much more myself than I ever have! I agree that this space has also contributed to an intellectual awakening and is a joy to belong to.
As for concept projects in my reading right now: I am following a line of interest into the "fallen woman," starting with the novels of Jean Rhys. I want to explore more about the ways in which society and culture has demonised the ways in which women choose to live. So just a light topic then 😄 😉
Happy Birthday! And thank you for continuing to write what you are thinking and experiencing and adding to this community of readers on Substack. No set goals for my reading life, just keep searching to add to my favorites list…but fine reading lots of just good books. I read the Social Photograph back in 2019, but my notes say i stopped at 117…I was searching for the “why” we share and what it means. I think what your essays get to heart of, is that we are here to better understand ourselves and be in dialog with others in the community. Books are a great way to talk and think into the big and little aspects of our shared humanity. So thank you for all you do! And best wishes for a wonderful reading year. 📚
I’ll never forget the first comment I ever received from you, which pulled me to you right away. It was about having just finished reading Miranda July’s All Fours, and grappling with age, identity, motherhood. I wish I could find the comment!
You are so astute, and following along on the adventure of your newsletter has made me feel like a smarter, stronger, more awesome woman. Thank you for existing and sharing!
Petya, you inspired me. I started writing about my poetry reading on Substack when I turned 55 in November. My reading goals have been evolving into reading as many newly published/first poetry colllections or chapbooks. And, I also have an emerging goal around reading memoirs about addiction and homelessness (to help myself cultivate empathy with a family member who suffers with both of these things). Thank you for this post and for these great questions to help me (all of us) reflect on our own reading.
Here’s to celebrating the start of another celestial orbit! GO YOU!!! Your thoughts about performative reading resonated strongly, even as there can be elements of that within any community that comes together over a common focus. But, I don’t ever get that with the community you cultivate here—rather, there seems to be just a pure joy and celebration of the reading act itself—aka, reading as a practice. (Or for me, now, reading as a spiritual practice!). Kindred souls, kindred “literary” souls, get it. This is why I look forward to your posted offerings (as well as the fun photos you include, sometimes, as you did here, slipping in the pics of your daughter! It also wasn’t lost on me the thick hardback book you had with you tucking into your shoulder bag!).
I’m glad you’re finding so much joy and meaning in the sharing. I like how you always close with questions!
I’m happy right now to have a good rhythm going with one fiction audiobook, one non-fiction book, and a book of poetry on the breakfast table. I found myself last year feeling like I wasn’t getting to reading or not getting to what I wanted to read, so I’m making reading happen.
I would like to focus more on gravitating toward books I truly want to read, especially older ones, not just recent ones or ones in the zeitgeist, and I’m having some success with that by picking up the nonfiction and the poetry.
Happy birthday!
Thank you, Linda!
Happy Birthday! As someone who is 20 years older than that, all that you describe still applies! I’m still working full time in a demanding professional career, married with 2 dogs; children and now grandchildren nearby and squeezing in all the small daily joys I can—while staying healthy. It’s not any easier and I haven’t found that secret formula except to say, we all do our best to prioritize what’s important during the day, a season and that those priorities continue to change. Reading grounds me and provides me with great joy and reminds me of the larger picture of life!
Thank you, Cyndi! It’s so interesting to read your note and be reminded that even though so many of us live in anticipation of some future moment when everything is clear, settled and easy… life just doesn’t work that way. So, you better do what you want to do NOW and make it work.
Petya, happy birthday! Everything you spoke of resonates with me. I am a few years older but not much so we are in a similar stage of life where time and aging take on a new focus. This space and broader community have been good for my soul. It has allowed me to grow, to feel, and to change.
This year I see my reading shifting. I have a couple of projects I am reading for. One here on Substack, the other a personal learning project. Beyond that I am allowing myself to read for joy. For the last few years I got into a routine that almost became performative. Oh, I have to read this prize winner or that best seller because everyone is talking about it. There can be value in that at times but this past week I crowd-sourced ideas for a genre I love and it was amazing! So many great recommendations in genre fiction and it made me happy to have a community who enjoys those same things.
I am continually on the lookout for fresh voices. I believe reading the classics and the critical works of literature is important. But I also need new and unheard voices. Voices in translation. Voices that are just a whisper at the moment but l seeking an ear. Voices that make me think and rethink who I am.
Love you my friend. Keep writing and inspiring and growing and reading!
Thank you so much, Matt! Your words and your friendship mean so much to me! It feels so liberating to have figured out a way to do for yourself something that you didn’t think was no longer in the cards. Taking none of it for granted.
Happy birthday! Forty-five, eh? Where was I then and, more to the point, what was I reading? Hmmmm. Ah, I was in the same house I'm in now and working a job I hated, but reading just as much as I do now. It's my constant, my love, my escape. And right now, at 54, it's better than ever! And that, my dear friend, is largely down to the online book space. I didn't know back then that I could write about books and make videos about books and lead others through books. Since leaving uni in 1998 and joining the big bad world, I'd been reading pretty much alone, with no one to talk to about what I was reading or to listen to about what they were reading. And now, look at us go!
Have a great day!
Look at us go!!! And we can afford to buy ourselves all the nice pens!!! ❤️❤️
That’s a great point. Some life events have the book I was reading embedded in the memory—the just fine audiobook I was listening to when I had a (minor) accident—but I need to consult “the list” to see what I was reading on a particular birthday.
I’m proud of finding joy in books that I’m reading as part of a writing project. In the past that sometimes felt like a slog—but now I know it doesn’t have to.
Happy birthday! Have a beautiful day!
I want you to know that I get so much joy from each and every one of your posts, Petya.
I relate to all of it. My own reading life has improved so much. And I am 75!
I have always loved reading, collecting books, thinking about books, talking about books, making notes about books, remembering books. And now I feel that I can really savour it all, that it is not just what I do… “she likes to read”…
You have made me realize the sheer wonder and richness of it all.
Thank you!
Firstly, happy birthday!
Secondly, this piece spoke to me in many ways, as a recovering over-sharer! I love the idea of our curated reading life as a way to stand alongside others, and I'll be mulling over this for the coming days and weeks!
I am not quite sure how the Performative Reading conversation started but I am so over it. There is so much beauty in doing things in community or doing them alone-together. I keep thinking of all the commonly accepted advice around habit formation that somehow doesn’t apply to reading. Why not?! If someone wants to get in better shape and buys a gym membership or new running shoes, we don’t mock them for not running every day. We encourage them to take the next step… Anyway. I am so glad to be reading alongside you! ❤️
Happy Birthday! Wow. Everything you wrote totally resonated with me. I am 58 and a photographer and reader, post-menopausal, started my HRT journey about 3 years ago. I can tell you it is actually quite life changing. It's great that you started early. HRT gave me the energy to take my life back quite honestly. Thank you for putting The Social Photo on my radar. Definitely going to put my eyes on that one. Enjoy your day!
Thank you so much for your note and I am so happy to hear that you are feeling better. I am still in the phase where I look and feel 5 months pregnant but I am told this is common and I will even out soon. God bless my husband for being emotionally mature enough to help me through it.
The Social Photo was reissued last year but the book was originally published a few years back and deals with some of the early debates around social photography. I think it needs a bigger update since so much has changed but I still found it very helpful as a framework around how to think about sharing online.
Happy birthday, Petya! Your post struck a chord with me (just shared it with my IRL book group in Minneapolis—we're reading All the Beauty in the World, which I highly recommend). I have so enjoyed your posts and personal insights. They are not to be missed, much like Maria Popova's Marginalian. I hope you are able to take a day to celebrate yourself. (For my own bday earlier this month, I had a day date with myself, perusing a bookstore, journaling at a cafe, treasure-hunting at a vintage shop, and even took in a $5 matinee to finally see Hamnet.) Cheers to you and many more birthdays, reading friend!!
yes, i think you’re quite right about vernacular reading/writing — and for many, the associated photography of the moments spent reading. i like your way of wording it. happy birthday! 💕
Happy Birthday! And thank you for this lovely post! This will be sticking with me: "You can almost always connect a book to the life that was happening around it: who you were arguing with, what you were afraid of, what you were longing for. In that sense, the living becomes one with the reading, and the reading becomes the memory of the life."
Happy birthday! I also turned 45 this week (17th) and started HRT last week. A rite of passage, I suppose.
I'm building a concept project that I hope to pursue for the rest of the year: exploring nature through poetry and prose. I'm building myself a reading list that balances fiction with nonfiction, poetry, and nature journaling. I've been enamored with nature writing forever, but I've been inspired by your projects to formalize this into a study.
I hope you enjoy your day!
Happy Birthday, Petya! 🎂 and welcome to the HRT club 😄 as a just-turned-53 year old woman, I am a little ahead of you, but SO MUCH of what you say here resonates with me. I spent so many years worrying about getting older and feeling self-consious and it's been such a revelation to realise that I feel so much more myself than I ever have! I agree that this space has also contributed to an intellectual awakening and is a joy to belong to.
As for concept projects in my reading right now: I am following a line of interest into the "fallen woman," starting with the novels of Jean Rhys. I want to explore more about the ways in which society and culture has demonised the ways in which women choose to live. So just a light topic then 😄 😉
Happy Birthday! And thank you for continuing to write what you are thinking and experiencing and adding to this community of readers on Substack. No set goals for my reading life, just keep searching to add to my favorites list…but fine reading lots of just good books. I read the Social Photograph back in 2019, but my notes say i stopped at 117…I was searching for the “why” we share and what it means. I think what your essays get to heart of, is that we are here to better understand ourselves and be in dialog with others in the community. Books are a great way to talk and think into the big and little aspects of our shared humanity. So thank you for all you do! And best wishes for a wonderful reading year. 📚
HAPPIEST BEAUTIFUL BIRTHDAY, PETYA!
I’ll never forget the first comment I ever received from you, which pulled me to you right away. It was about having just finished reading Miranda July’s All Fours, and grappling with age, identity, motherhood. I wish I could find the comment!
You are so astute, and following along on the adventure of your newsletter has made me feel like a smarter, stronger, more awesome woman. Thank you for existing and sharing!
Petya, you inspired me. I started writing about my poetry reading on Substack when I turned 55 in November. My reading goals have been evolving into reading as many newly published/first poetry colllections or chapbooks. And, I also have an emerging goal around reading memoirs about addiction and homelessness (to help myself cultivate empathy with a family member who suffers with both of these things). Thank you for this post and for these great questions to help me (all of us) reflect on our own reading.
Here’s to celebrating the start of another celestial orbit! GO YOU!!! Your thoughts about performative reading resonated strongly, even as there can be elements of that within any community that comes together over a common focus. But, I don’t ever get that with the community you cultivate here—rather, there seems to be just a pure joy and celebration of the reading act itself—aka, reading as a practice. (Or for me, now, reading as a spiritual practice!). Kindred souls, kindred “literary” souls, get it. This is why I look forward to your posted offerings (as well as the fun photos you include, sometimes, as you did here, slipping in the pics of your daughter! It also wasn’t lost on me the thick hardback book you had with you tucking into your shoulder bag!).
I’m glad you’re finding so much joy and meaning in the sharing. I like how you always close with questions!
I’m happy right now to have a good rhythm going with one fiction audiobook, one non-fiction book, and a book of poetry on the breakfast table. I found myself last year feeling like I wasn’t getting to reading or not getting to what I wanted to read, so I’m making reading happen.
I would like to focus more on gravitating toward books I truly want to read, especially older ones, not just recent ones or ones in the zeitgeist, and I’m having some success with that by picking up the nonfiction and the poetry.