The Bunny Reader Manifesto | Delamor House
or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Hop 🐰📜
Preamble: A Declaration of Readerly Independence
We, the Bunny Readers of the world, having suffered long under the tyranny of "proper reading," do hereby declare our independence from the cruel and unusual punishment known as "reading books cover to cover just because that's how they're supposed to be read."
We hold these truths to be self-evident:
- That all readers are created with the inalienable right to hop
- That life is too short for boring beginnings
- That the pursuit of knowledge should be joyful, not punitive
Article I: The Right to Hop
We reject the linear supremacy.
We refuse to genuflect before the altar of Beginning-Middle-End. Books are not conveyor belts. We are not factory workers. We are foragers, honey. We are seekers. We are creatures of curiosity, not compliance.
When a book calls to us—really calls—we answer from wherever we are. Page 73? Perfect. Chapter 12? Divine. The glossary? Sometimes that's where the magic lives.
We claim our native reading religion.
Some of us discovered we were Bunnies in law school, surrounded by legal monuments that would crush a mortal reader. We learned to hop or die. We learned to sniff out the essential, to find the beating heart beneath the academic filler.
Others found their hop in childhood, sneaking flashlight-reading sessions where we'd skip to the good parts, the scary parts, the parts that made us feel something real.
We honor the art of the strategic skip.
We are not lazy. We are efficient. We are not disrespectful. We are discerning. We know the difference between a juicy passage and academic padding. We can smell filler from three chapters away.
Article II: The Sacred Principles of Bunny Reading
Principle 1: The Sniff Test
If a book doesn't grab us in the first few hops, we move on. Life is too short. Books are too many. Our attention is too precious to waste on prose that doesn't pulse.
Principle 2: The Table of Contents is Holy Scripture
We worship at the altar of the TOC. It tells us everything we need to know about where the treasure is buried. We read it like a map, not a menu we're obligated to order in sequence.
Principle 3: Random Page Opening is a Valid Research Method
Sometimes the universe wants to tell us something, and it uses page 247 to do it. We trust the randomness. We trust the synchronicity. We trust that the right words will find us when we need them.
Principle 4: Forgetting is Not Failure
We forget because we're human, not because we're broken. We forget because our brains are too busy processing the new to file away the old. We forget because forgetting makes space for discovery.
Principle 5: Rereading is Resurrection
When we return to Meditations for the fifth time, we're not failing at retention—we're practicing resurrection. Each reading brings us new eyes, new wounds, new wisdom. The book changes because we change.
Article III: Our Natural Enemies
The Linear Fundamentalists
Those who insist that reading "out of order" is somehow morally wrong. Who clutch their bookmarks like rosaries and speak in hushed tones about "the author's intended experience."
To them we say: The author is dead. Long live the reader.
The Completion Police
Those who ask, "Did you finish it?" as if reading were a race to be won rather than a dance to be danced.
To them we say: We finish when we're finished. Sometimes that's page 30. Sometimes that's three full read-throughs. Sometimes it's never, and that's perfect too.
The Guilt Peddlers
Those who make us feel bad for having seventeen books started and three finished this year.
To them we say: Our nightstand libraries are not signs of failure—they're evidence of appetite. We're not commitment-phobic. We're polyamorous with text.
Article IV: The Bunny Reader's Bill of Rights
We have the right to:
- Start books and never finish them
- Finish books and never remember them
- Read the ending first if we damn well please
- Skip entire chapters that bore us
- Read multiple books simultaneously
- Judge books by their covers (and their first paragraphs)
- Abandon books that don't serve us
- Return to books that do
- Read children's books as adults
- Read "trashy" books without shame
- Read profound books while eating cereal
- Take reading breaks that last months
- Read the same book over and over
- Never read books that everyone says we "should"
We have the right to our own reading rhythm.
Some of us are sprinters. Some are marathoners. Some are interval trainers. Some read like we're solving mysteries. Some read like we're savoring wine. Some read like we're gathering intelligence for the revolution.
All are valid. All are sacred.
Article V: The Theological Defense
On the charge of disrespecting authors:
We reject this accusation. We honor authors by reading them as living beings, not museum pieces. We honor them by taking what we need and leaving the rest, rather than forcing ourselves through prose that doesn't serve us just to say we "finished."
A true author writes for connection, not completion rates.
On the charge of missing "the full experience":
We reject the notion that there is only one valid way to experience a text. Books are not movies. They're not meant to be consumed in a single sitting in a prescribed order. They're gardens to be wandered, not tours to be endured.
On the charge of intellectual laziness:
We work harder than linear readers. We're constantly making connections across texts, finding patterns, building our own synthesis. We're not passive consumers—we're active collaborators in meaning-making.
Article VI: Our Sacred Practices
The Hop: Our primary method of navigation. Trust the instinct. Follow the energy. Let curiosity be your guide.
The Graze: Reading multiple books at once, letting them speak to each other in the margins of our minds.
The Return: Coming back to books like old lovers, finding new things each time.
The Abandon: Releasing books that no longer serve us without guilt or explanation.
The Share: Recommending specific chapters, passages, or even single sentences rather than entire books.
Article VII: Our Manifesto for the World
To Publishers: Stop making books so damn long just to justify the price point. Sometimes 100 pages of fire is worth more than 400 pages of filler.
To Teachers: Stop traumatizing children by forcing them to finish books they hate. Teach them to be curious, not compliant.
To Book Clubs: Let us discuss the parts we actually read, not the parts we were supposed to read.
To Goodreads: Add a "beautifully abandoned" shelf option.
To the World: Reading is not a performance. It's not a competition. It's not a moral imperative. It's a pleasure, a practice, a way of being alive in language.
Closing Benediction
We are the Bunny Readers.
We hop because we're alive.
We skip because we're smart.
We abandon because we're brave.
We return because we're faithful.
We refuse to apologize for reading like we live—curiously, passionately, on our own terms.
We are not failed linear readers.
We are successful human beings.
Hop freely, dear bunnies. Hop wildly. Hop without shame.
The books will wait.
The words will find you.
The stories will speak when you're ready to listen.
In Bunny We Trust.
"Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested."
—Francis Bacon (who was clearly a proto-Bunny)"I cannot remember the books I've read any more than the meals I have eaten; even so, they have made me."
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (definitely a Bunny)"A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies. The man who never reads lives only one."
—George R.R. Martin (who understands that hopping through a thousand books gives you a thousand more lives than trudging through ten)
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