I used to want desperately to be a “proper” critic, to be taken seriously, to have a full command of history and theory, but I don’t want that anymore. I don’t want to “admire” writing for its erudition, I want to be changed by it. I want to know what it’s like to be someone else. I want to have that moment of recognition, finding something on the page I’ve felt but haven’t put into words. I don’t want just to accumulate knowledge but to be transformed by it, even if that transformation is tiny. Reading like this is at first about the possibility of changing your mind, but it can also be about changing the way you live, moving beyond what you already know, and letting that expansion affect how you live. Even at the size of a sandgrain, the shift is enough. You might speak up at the dinner table like Mary, or take up drinking wine and crying like Simone, or get up early to write like the character of Lenù in Ferrante’s Neapolitan novels. You might try an open marriage or decide to have a child with a lover or determine to lie to get ahead. It is not about self-improvement but about freedom. And one of the ways you put on your freedom is by changing: becoming less of a feminist or more of one, writing more or something different or giving up altogether, gaining the courage to act according to your beliefs or condemning society from seclusion.