A cross-legged dress, a printed dress, and a book in the middle, accompanied by a personal text about it. You will probably find a similar post at Instagram in recent years, either from the “original source” or from one of his followers. This, of course, is about an account with an amazing name. “Boots and Intelligence” or otherwise “Intellectual Hips” which, since 2019, when it started, has managed to make the book blog popular and Instagram, an activity that theoretically “offers little” to social networks that idolize the image.

Because, however, beyond what you say and how you say it, Boots and Wit soon became a regular in the feed of those who appreciate books and tasteful reports, now listing more 18 thousand subscribers.

Many will recognize this account, but few still knew who was behind it. So in the real world the page admin listens Mattina to the Apostle, and after spending the last few years suggesting books with great care and love, she decided to write her own.

So, for several days Matina Apostolou can pose (and) with “Particles” her first attempt at writing, issued Potamos Publications. Through his heroine Alice, the author builds a mosaic of female nature in all its manifestations: a daughter who becomes a woman, and then a partner and mother, who, with tenderness, emotion, metabolizes joy and pain until they balance on the scales.

In “Particles” you will somehow meet parts of yourself, whether you are a woman or a man, you will notice something from women in your life. Within the pages of the book, you will also find many readings from Matina to the Apostle, as well as those that make up her outside the world of the book. It also coincided that he studied chemical engineering, this is what he is talking about here. “cute”?

– In October last year, the idea came to develop the idea of ​​my account further. What I do on Instagram through the character I created is to show how each book works in me, what impulses it finds inside a person with my specific characteristics, what thoughts and feelings it evokes. I do not review or endorse books. My lyrics are always personal, the person who follows me “knows” me and can understand how my mind turned in certain directions when reading something. So I thought, starting from excerpts from the books I read and underlined, to write short stories, to show how reading works internally, how we become what we “consume”, how this reversal that takes mind and emotion can take the form of a creator. something new. The surprise was that what I had in mind deviated from the original direction, and the book took shape on its own, because I had something to tell.

– Definitely yes. But none of the page’s success was due to me giving away iPhones or giving away teapots. The people who follow me do so because of what I write and because of the way I chose to reveal myself and my thoughts by talking about the book in an image-dominated environment. So the account firstly gave me the confidence that I could try writing, and secondly, it helped me get a platform for my book without having any contacts in the field who could potentially help. me in this endeavor. But I understand that at the same time it aroused suspicions among those who do not know me and only heard the name of the account.

– The interaction is what gave me the best parts of my book. Sometime last year, I asked people who follow me to tell me moments when they felt joy. These responses became scenes in the Moments and Notes chapters. To be honest, what’s happening with the book is unprecedented, I don’t quite recognize the feeling I get because it’s something new that’s being created as we speak. But I definitely feel that the text has left me, I can’t even reread it, now there is curiosity about how people who don’t know me will read it. I am not at all cool and relaxed, I have a mixture of joy and terrible anxiety, impatience and restlessness.

– Alice is basically me, she’s also my friend, that’s what I perceived about the women that I met and it may be the wrong impression, but they are what created her. I was lucky that I did not experience all of her experiences, but some are more or less common to all of us.

– Each chapter is based on an excerpt from the book. The bits I used are vital, I didn’t want to just show my readings. All the books I have singled out have had an impact, favorite authors have shaped me in the same way that meeting important people in my life has shaped me, they are now part of me. Rhea Franci is one of my favorite heroines, but I didn’t think about her (at least not consciously) while Alice was being written. I was more worried about not revealing myself through my character more than I should have due to inexperience. The last part was written in Kythera when I had already finished the book, because I thought that in my text it was impossible not to have a horizon or my island.

– I don’t know how what you’ve been through affects the way you live? I don’t know how it works for everyone, for me I’m pretty sure that somewhere between the lung and the stomach there is some kind of filter paper that holds everything that I consider important and eventually becomes a part of me. The rest is sort of washed away. For me, they may wash off a little easier, as it is very difficult for me to remember the books I have read, the films I have seen, the music I have listened to. My participation in relevant discussions is almost non-existent, I envy people who remember entire passages or verses. But I am sure that they are inside me and have done their job, because over the years I feel that everything falls into place and I become who I am.

– I moved away from the time of study for many years, I think they remained more as a way of thinking than as knowledge. The book shows an attempt to rationalize even emotion, giving it a material existence: happiness is a gas, sadness is a liquid, loneliness is a solid body that presses on the chest. My writing is clear and direct, as is the way I act, and sometimes it finds its rhythm in long sentences, like my thinking when I try to explain. My close friends said they could almost hear me while reading the book because I talk like that.

– All the chapters gave me a lot of trouble, but it took extra effort at the point where the text takes a metaphysical turn, describing the afterlife. It has been erased and rewritten many times, kept me awake at night, and I gave it an easier name to banish my desire.

Check out this post on Instagram.

The post was shared by Matina Apostolou (@intellectual_thighs)

– I did not mean a specific reader, I tried to write honestly and mainly to my tribe. In other words, people with close aesthetic codes who can and agree on the main thing.

– Ideally, I’d like them to fit like pinballs, bouncing here and there until they touch at least a little heart and mind until we get it right. If I can communicate with at least one person in this way, I will be satisfied.

“Particles” of Matina Apostolou are published by Potamos.