My 17-year old nephew has a thing for tattoos. It started with the death of his great- and my grandfather several years ago after which he inscribed ‘We will never forget’ across his forearm. Since then, many less meaningful (and some absolutely meaningless) tattoos have appeared all over his body, and trying to force through some unsolicited advice, I told him: Do you really think that for the rest of your life you want to go about with your body covered in teen-witticism? God, when I remember what I considered cool and wise in your age, I try to shove these memories as far as possible before anyone telepathy-hears them! Don’t you think you should leave more space for tattooing the rest of your life thoughts and experiences on to?

I believe in what I said to him – people should avoid making rash life-committing decisions when they are still in their teens, because this is the time for exploring, tasting, and trying, rather than deciding. Yet one of the most important decisions in your life – whom to become – needs to happen at that time. Even if you had the blessing of the inner voice telling you what you need to do then, there are so many sources and people who claim they know better, and you are too insecure and easily influenced to argue. At least most of us are.

It is quite different when you are approaching your thirties, isn’t it? For you have tried something, you know a little, and you’ve learned what you enjoy doing, and what you absolutely hate. Most importantly, you’ve realised where you interests – or at least some of them – lie, and it is probably the same place where you could be doing something you will be good at.

But by that time, of course, you would have already completed your education, be it training courses, university degree, professional qualification and so on, and spent so much time doing it that you need to work for the rest of your youthful days and further to make it financially worthwhile.

Are you with me here? I’ve done it all, really! Finished school, got a degree, topped it off with a masters and got a bunch of professional qualifications in finance as a delicious supplement to lure LinkedIn headhunters with. However, it is only now that I realise I lack knowledge and skills in the topics that really interest me, and I have done nothing to improve my knowledge in that area for the past twenty years that I’ve been in the education system!

As you probably know, if we ever met or you follow my Instagram, I love reading. Ever since I’ve finished my first book with my mum when I was five, I have never slept without one under my pillow. Sadly, the fact that I read tons of books in Russian and English doesn’t mean that I can claim to be even a tiny bit educated in literature. Until recently, I didn’t even know you could be educated further than just reading a list of ‘1,000 books to read before you die’, or else I thought a field like that was purely academic and wasn’t sure it lay in the cards for me.

But since I’ve started writing about books or started writing in general, I realised that I desperately needed to know more about the text as an object of scientific knowledge, something that can be analysed and tamed. You can’t say why a certain writer is talented, and why he manages to grasp your attention and touch your mind with his words when the other cannot, because I think it involves a certain magic that you can only feel. But getting as close to dismantling words and books to pieces to see what they are made of, and at the same time looking at them as whole, to try to understand what they represent, what they are trying to say, and why they exist – this is what I mean by calling it science.

Once that thought crossed my mind – I, the ignorant reader of bestsellers, realised there was a whole ocean of disciplines devoted to that. To name a few: literary history, literary biography, myth criticism, moral-aesthetic criticism, linguistics… Plenty to research, read and write about, to study and help us become better readers. You can be as large a part of it as you’d like, I would love for you to share ideas and suggestions.

Meanwhile, I promise a constant flow of thorough (read lengthy) book reviews and more digestible (read shorter) articles to come.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!