"Like any city dweller newly alone in the dark countryside, Etain realized that she suddenly believed in ghosts."

Entirely too real. Me in my comfort zones of apartments and dense urban environments? Certified tough guy, ain't afraid of no ghosts. Me anywhere sparely populated or even just in a free standing house without multiple nearby neighbors? Immediately creeping myself out over every little thing, not taking ANY chances and yet surely about to meet my paranormal demise.

What is your favorite book that you've read this year so far? I think mine would be either Circe by Madeline Miller either The Poppy War by RF Kuang. Circe made me feel understood like no one or no book ever did before, felt like I wasn't the only woman in the world misunderstood and brought my heart a bit of healing The Poppy War brought me anything BUT healing, but the world building, the characters, the plot, the war strategy... Never have my brain felt this satiated by a book and it was amazing

Tell me about yours!!

What are some of the weirdest or most unusual places you've read a book?

A few weeks ago I was early to a movie so I brought my book and read until the trailers begun! I thought it would be fun to see where else people have taken their books that you wouldn't think of normally!

What is your favorite book that you've read this year so far? I think mine would be either Circe by Madeline Miller either The Poppy War by RF Kuang. Circe made me feel understood like no one or no book ever did before, felt like I wasn't the only woman in the world misunderstood and brought my heart a bit of healing The Poppy War brought me anything BUT healing, but the world building, the characters, the plot, the war strategy... Never have my brain felt this satiated by a book and it was amazing

Tell me about yours!!

So I’m sure (unless you’re in a tiny town in the middle of nowhere) you have at least one or two book clubs that meet regularly in your area. I know for me, I’m in Fresno, CA, reading meet ups have proliferated in my area due to social media. Just last night the “Bookish Mom’s Club” I’m a part of on FB had a bingo night I attended. I’ve also been to a couple silent book reading gatherings within the last year. My question is for those who love Pagebound like me, have you found yourself a bit of a Pagebound evangelist in these groups, or even outside of them too?

I know as soon as I hear that someone is a reader, I’m telling them about Pagebound and sharing my profile with them.

Also, what are the names of some of your favorite book clubs/reading groups in your area?!

You can only choose two, and feel free to talk about it if you want to.

For me it's

1. The little prince.
2. Oh! The places you'll go.

I've been obsessed with the little prince for YEARS. It comes to mind automatically whrn I think about a favourite anything...

And the other one is helping me to get through life. I only read it because I had a short attention span but it's really good

Hello everyone, and welcome to my TED Talk. I was a philosophy minor during my undergrad and I want to talk about one of my favourite ideas. This is going to be a bit of a long one, so grab a cup of coffee, some tea, or a packet of biscuits, and settle in. Let me introduce you to the idea of radical alterity and Luce Irigaray's concept of "I love to you." Now, this might sound strange at first, but bear with me.

What our culture celebrates as romantic love is often not love at all. More often than not, it's possession. To explain this, we need to start with Emmanuel Levinas and his idea of totality. Totality is our tendency to reduce another person to something we can completely understand, define, categorise, and possess. We use labels and assumptions to bring the other person into our own world until they become familiar, predictable, and, ultimately, an extension of ourselves. In other words, we force the other to become the same. The problem is that, in doing so, we erase their independent selfhood. To completely know someone is, in a sense, to destroy them.

Levinas argues that we never truly know another person because they will always remain other. There will always be something beyond our understanding, something irreducible. Instead of totality, he proposes infinity—the recognition that another person always exceeds our understanding. That distance is not a failure of intimacy. It's an ethical responsibility. To stand before another person is to recognise their vulnerability while accepting that they can never be fully consumed by our own ego.

This is where Luce Irigaray builds on Levinas' philosophy. She argues that there is a way to love someone without erasing them, and surprisingly, it begins with language. Instead of saying "I love you," she proposes "I love to you." It seems like a tiny grammatical change, but philosophically it's enormous.

"I love you" turns the other into the direct object of the sentence. Love becomes something imposed upon them, something that possesses. "I love to you," however, preserves distance. It acknowledges that love moves towards another person without claiming ownership over them. It allows them to remain fully themselves.

It's the difference between saying: "You belong to me." and "You belong with me."

That boundary matters. Without it, Irigaray argues, we engage in what she calls cultural cannibalism. We consume the other person, turning them into a reflection of ourselves in order to satisfy our own ego. Their difference disappears because we cannot tolerate it. This is remarkably similar to Levinas' idea of totality.

Whether we call it totality or cultural cannibalism, the result is the same: the other person is absorbed into our own identity, and their selfhood disappears. The alternative is proximity. Proximity means standing beside someone rather than swallowing them whole. It means recognising their infinity, accepting responsibility towards them, conversing with them, and allowing them to remain unknowable. That is what radical alterity asks of us. Now, you might be wondering why I'm talking about all this.

Because I think this philosophy perfectly explains the kinds of love we see in Obsession by Curry Barker and Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë.

Let's start with Obsession. When Bear makes his wish, he completely erases Nikki's autonomy. By taking away her freedom, he destroys the very person he claims to love. Nikki ceases to exist as an independent individual and instead becomes an extension of Bear's desire. Ironically, the moment he gets what he wants, he loses the Nikki he loved in the first place. His wish becomes a literal metaphor for consumption.

He cannot tolerate the possibility that Nikki, as an autonomous person, might not choose him. Rather than facing her as she is, even when she asks him, "Do you have something to say to me?; he chooses certainty, makes the wish, and consumes her instead. In doing so, he obliterates the "to" in "I love to you." He replaces it with possession. He replaces uncertainty with "She is mine." But that certainty comes at the cost of Nikki herself and the responsibility of looking at the Face of the Other and its demands. He, instead, imposes his will on the Other. This is seen in the customer service phone call the customer service guy tells Bear that he has the moral obligation to be there for her. Which is to say, face her and really look at her. But he doesn't. What I'm trying to say is that the uncertainty exacted the cost of destroying the Nikki he loved because by posessing her, she didn't exist anymore. She was just an extension of himself. Levinas says that by trying to totalise the other, you make them an entity in a plastic form. Remind you of Nikki post wish?

Wuthering Heights presents two completely different models of love. The first is Catherine and Heathcliff. Their relationship is the peak rejection of radical alterity. Neither can exist without the other because each attempts to collapse the other into themselves. Catherine famously declares, "I am Heathcliff," and later says, "Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same." It's a closed loop. Difference disappears. And without difference, there is no ethical relationship. Their love becomes this total singularity with no room for ethical connection, leading to violence and madness. It becomes obsession. They consume one another until all that remains is destruction and revenge.

Heathcliff repeats this same violence with Hareton. Just as he and Catherine tried to erase one another's individuality, Heathcliff attempts to remake Hareton in his own image. He deliberately denies him education just as Heathcliff was. Again, another person becomes merely an extension of Heathcliff's ego. There is no difference between the violence imposed on Catherine and the violence imposed on Hareton because they've become objects in his world. But then Brontë gives us Cathy and Hareton. Their relationship is built on mutuality rather than possession. Cathy is educated. Hareton is not. Neither tries to erase that difference. Instead, they acknowledge it and their intimacy develops through shared labour and shared learning. Cathy teaches Hareton to read, but she never tries to make him into another version of herself. Hareton grows without surrendering his identity. Unlike Heathcliff and Catherine, Cathy doesn't demand sameness. Their relationship is one of standing beside one another, looking in the same direction rather than collapsing into one another. They maintain the boundary that Catherine and Heathcliff could never preserve. That's what makes their love ethical.

Both Obsession and Wuthering Heights ask the same question: what happens when love becomes possession? The answer is that it destroys the very person it claims to cherish. True love exists not in total fusion but in proximity. It asks us to accept that the people we love will always remain, in some ways, mysterious. The ethics of love therefore require profound humility. They require us to accept that we will never know another person completely. The moment we claim to have mapped someone entirely, we reduce them to an object within our grasp. We stop encountering them as another consciousness and start treating them as our possession. Real love exists in the space between you and me. It exists in distance and in the irreducible mystery between us that prevents love from becoming property.

Perhaps that's why Irigaray asks us to rethink such a familiar phrase. Maybe we shouldn't say, "You belong to me." Maybe we should say, "You belong with me." Maybe we shouldn't say, "I love you." Maybe we should say, "I love to you." Because the other person is, in many ways, like God. You can stand before them. You can move towards them. You can give them love. But you can never fully know them because they're always beyond grasp. They're unknowable and infinite and like Levinas says, and I paraphrase, you stand as a servant to that infinity.

Thank you so much for reading this TED TALK. I would like to know your thoughts on this concept regardless of whether this is familiar or new to you!

If you guys want to read about this in detail then please check out Chapter 2 of Ethics, Aesthetics, and Education: A Levinasian Approach by Donald S. Blumenfeld-Jones and Chapter 10 of I Love to You - Sketch for a Felicity Within History by Luce Irigaray. These are incredibly beautiful works.    

What are everyones favorite pieces of media beyond books? I made a template below but feel free to add to it/delete from it as you see fit.

Movies: TV Shows: Music Artist/Songs: Podcasts: Youtube: Visual Artisit/Art Piece:

I can't wait to see and steal everyones tastes