Thoughts

This year, I decided I would make it a personal goal to try to start reading more. While over time the details of the why have evolved, my initial motivations were to rekindle some of that childlike wonder I had for books as a kid and to invest in a medium that had more substance to offer than the dozens of YouTube videos I was guzzling; enjoying but not really reaching any point of personal fulfillment or deeper enjoyment out of. It accomplished both and then some. I had heard about people who started reading more and who subsequently felt a substantial change in their life and in how they thought. I thought this was probably hyperbole (like with a lot of things in life), but no — it was actually totally accurate. Regular reading helped expand my worldview and my tools for thought in multiple different ways, beyond just becoming a fun and relaxing activity.

As a kid, I enjoyed a sense of wonder and excitement about books, being utterly lost in fictional worlds, perhaps partly because I didn’t really understand my own. Despite all that I have changed since that time, that element of wonder remains, I just had to dig a little deeper, push past all the conditioning of school that books aren’t fun, to rediscover it. But it certainly is there, like the child within all of us.

One thing I have come to appreciate about books as I have gotten older is their ability to provide references that we can use to explain complex concepts. I often feel that I don’t have the words to describe the emotions and thoughts I am feeling; that I am limited by language (or my inability to properly use it). While this case may be more indicative of my individual brain struggling a bit rather than it butting up against a linguistic barrier, that barrier nonetheless certainly exists. There are times where you struggle to convey the depth of emotion and thought that exists within your brain; the idea that words can’t capture the entirety of what you think and feel, even if you have all the time in the world. Books have helped me with this, as they provide us with an entirely new lexicon built of references. And no, I don’t mean as jokes (although they certainly can be). Books provide us with a shared experience. When I am trying to convey to someone a particular deep feeling, words like paternal, wise, and caring all fall flat in comparison to the name Dumbledore. Sure, the adjectives carry meaning and some emotional weight, but when I say the name Dumbledore, you know exactly what I mean, perhaps even better than I do. There is a totality to it — you may have a different interpretation of Dumbledore and what he did, but we nonetheless picture the exact same person, via a shared experience. Or Cedric. Or Snape. These names probably conjure complex emotions and thoughts for you — at least they do to me, tied to specific concepts that are hard to pin down in words.

Beyond purely communication, I think this increased vocabulary allows us to think thoughts that we were unable to before. As language limits not only what we can say but what we can think — adding complete new words and ideas allows us to think things we never could have before. This is incredibly powerful. They truly are new words with their own unique meanings, grounded in the shared experience that is the story. I truly think that trying to describe a concept/character/etc in a book is a bit like trying to describe color to someone who has never seen before. You can try, but no combination of words will ever really add up to what you mean as well as that original concept. This is also akin to how every word in the English language is unique in its own right — you have synonyms but none of them are exactly the same as each other. You can describe a word, but there is something beyond words that makes each individual word unique in its meaning and usage.

This extends far beyond referring to specific characters though — there are concepts that I simply don’t think I could explain without certain texts as references (the application of teleology as a response to free will vs determinism in Story of Your Life by Ted Chiang, for example). Concepts that are genuinely difficult for me to put into words to explain, but that through examples provided by authors, I don’t have to. The author can simply paint a story, and you will reach conclusions about these concepts on your own. This is a beautiful thing I love about reading — the ability to have viewers come to the conclusion themselves and come to their own interpretations of events.

While we all have a shared experience of the story, we all come to our own conclusions independently. In some ways, fiction is the opposite of self-help; the lessons are still there but you have to find them yourself, they aren’t spoon-fed to you. I find that because of my involvement in coming to these conclusions, I often remember these lessons a lot more than I do the lessons offered to me in self-help media. The questions and (sometimes available, sometimes not) answers to those questions that surface are just all that more memorable because you do a portion of the lifting yourself, interpreting the story that has been written.

This touches on another joy of reading for me — the staying power. I remember more about the dozens of books I read this year than about the dozen videos I’ve seen in the past week. Perhaps this is an unfair comparison due to the nature of the media, but I stand by my claim that books have some of the strongest staying power, mentally and emotionally, out of the various media that I have consumed. I remember how I felt at the end of Never Let Me Go quite clearly, almost as clearly as if something had actually happened to me, even though it was ~ 9 months ago. And even for those that I can’t remember in detail — they have nonetheless helped make me and helped me develop as a person, and I often remember the lessons I drew from the text. On a personal note, I feel that this year has been one of my most internally transformative in recent memory and though this isn’t attributable to any one thing, I do think that my invested time in reading this year has helped widen my worldview in a lot of ways and helped me grow as a person, from both the fiction and the non-fiction I’ve read. Be it schizophrenia, the prison industrial complex, or a wacky fictional desert town, they all managed to teach me things about the world we live in, about myself, and about the human experience.

And honestly, it’s just damn fun at a certain point. It took a few books for me to get into the rhythm of things, but once you’ve started up again and have read a few books, it does get a lot easier to make it a part of your daily routine, reading a bit before bed or perhaps on a break during the day. Replacing a couple YouTube videos or 1 episode of a show with a half hour of reading is all it takes. By sneaking in a half hour to hour of reading a day, I was able to read a few books a month, which I would have thought a ridiculous amount beforehand! But it takes less daily time than you think; just a regular commitment to set aside a little time for something that matters, and then the results will compound over time, like with most intentional hobby pursuits. It has added an immeasurable amount of depth and growth to my life and offered me a much more fulfilling medium than YouTube or Netflix.

I would recommend picking up a book to: anyone who looks for YouTube videos but wants more, anyone who hasn’t read in a while, anyone who wants to rekindle that childhood wonder, anyone who wants to expand their worldview and perspective, to anyone really.

My advice: just pick up whatever you want. If you’re hankering for Shakespeare, knock yourself out, but if you’re hankering for Calvin and Hobbes — read Calvin and Hobbes. Read whatever feels fun and feels right; don’t worry or feel bad if it’s not some college-syllabus level text. At the end of the day, you read for you, not for anyone else.

Here are a few recommendations — my top 5 books that I read this year.

Book Recommendations

5 Book Recommendations from my 2020 reading:

1) Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro (F)

Phew, this book. This book hit me harder emotionally than any book has in a long time. A simple story about some kids at a boarding school and their post-boarding school lives turns out to be anything but, rife with great characters and philosophical questions to ponder. My review here is brief because I don’t want to spoil anything on this one, but I promise you — it’s great. The emotions I felt at the end stayed with me for weeks after finishing the text. Shout out to Madison for recommending this one to me.

2) The Collected Schizophrenias by Esmé Weijun Wang (NF)

This non-fiction work by Esmé Weijun Wang really was an unexpected highlight for me. I stumbled across this book in the most happenstance way I think I’ve ever stumbled across a book — I read a random quote from the book on my Instagram Explore page and was so compelled by the writing style that I bought the book a couple minutes later — with basically no knowledge of what it was about. This is an essay collection by Mrs. Wang about her experiences living with schizoaffective disorder (which I had never heard of before this — but is related to schizophrenia). It is potent, poetically written, and perhaps the most authentic and real depiction of mental illness that I have ever read. What strikes me the most about this collection is its lack of a moral/theme/conclusion. While this would normally be seen as a negative thing, in this instance I think it is one of the book’s strong suits. This is not a book that tells you everything is gonna be okay — this is not a book that tells you everything is doomed either. This is not a book that aims to be summed up by a central message. This book simply paints what this person has gone through in their struggles with mental health, and I can’t think of any more compelling way to capture the human condition in the context of mental health than that. Highly recommend this text.

3) Are Prisons Obsolete? by Angela Davis (NF)

Another great non-fiction text. This text is somehow concise and in depth at the same time, at only about ~100 pages but giving an incredible overview of the prison industrial complex and going into both the history of and modern existence of the prison. Davis questions things that many Americans take as a fundamental backbone of society, asking questions as radical as the title, and gives a compelling argument as to why they might be. Whether you agree with Davis’ solution or not (I personally do), this text serves as an excellent overview of some of the problems we face with the prison industrial complex in America. If you feel that you don’t know much about the prison industrial complex / why prisons are the way they are, you are the intended audience and I would highly recommend you read this. Shout out to Juan for recommending this one to me.

4) The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood (F)

This fiction classic by Margaret Atwood was rather timely to read this year. This text imagines a sort of apocalyptic near future where societal views of women have regressed to a form of hyper-puritanism involving various forms of societal subjugation and sexual servitude and follows one narrator through this process. Beyond its extremely compelling and haunting vision, I think what actually makes this text one of my favorites of the year is in the characters. As we watch the world crumble and burn in this text into a hellish future, we see how the characters handle the unspeakable — and how quickly they adapt to unthinkable circumstances. The resilience the characters display in the face of this, but moreso the realness the characters display is relatable and authentic, often focusing on the mundane and small things instead of the larger things. Using butter in absence of moisturizer, for instance. This book and its subtle moments of realness resonated strongly with me in the context of 2020, as we have all watched the world undergo a mini apocalypse of its own in the form of the pandemic, as well as in the context of other slower (yet still very real!) apocalypses like climate change. It is by watching characters slowly adapt to unthinkable circumstances in this fictional novel, that I am reminded of how we all have adapted to (previously) unimaginable circumstances, albeit in a very different context, and in seeing the rawness and realness of Offred’s experience that I see the rawness and realness of all our experiences. Recommended reading for the pandemic. Shout out to Thanh-Mai for suggesting this one.

5) The Welcome to Night Vale Books by Joseph Fink and Jeffrey Cranor (F)

This was a hard spot. The top four all feel into place fairly easily, but there was a slew of books (see: honorable mentions) that I all loved dearly and so this was a hard pick for me. However, when I asked myself the question “which book do I wish everyone had read?” it was a no brainer. The “Welcome to Night Vale” series (currently 3 books) is an expansion of the “Welcome to Night Vale” podcast, which is a wacky surrealist podcast about this weird desert town, where weird things happen in a fairly normal way. I first listened to the podcast a few years back, and although I liked it for its surrealist approaches to life and absurdist humor, I didn’t delve too deep into the podcast as I was left wanting…more. I wanted something with a bit more depth and emotional bite — not just humor. I have to say, the novels 100% delivered. They combined the absurdist humor with subtle societal and personal commentary that made me laugh, stop and think, and sit there in the feels (often within the span of a single page!) in a way that really struck home for me. All of the three novels are all amazing and are all independent of one another, so you can start with any one of them — you don’t have to read them in order. But I would recommend starting with either the first or the second text, as the third takes a bit of a stylistic departure and while awesome in its own right, doesn’t resemble the structure of the first two very much. I read them in order. Highly recommend for a fun read that also has some depth and commentary.

Honorable Mentions

It was very difficult to whittle things down to a top 5, so I ended up with 5 honorable mentions. In no particular order:

• The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown
  Great thriller. Nothing extremely deep/insightful — just a kickass thriller. Read for an awesome ride.
• Stories of Your Life and Others by Ted Chiang
  Amazing modern science fiction short story collection — title story is my favorite short story I have ever read and changed the way I viewed intention and choice.
• Haruki Murakami’s work (specifically The Wind Up Bird Chronicle and Norwegian Wood)
  Both amazing stories by a famous Japanese author, one of magical realism and the other of city life in Japan. TW: discussion of: mental illness in Norwegian Wood
• Understanding Power by Noam Chomsky
  Amazing collection of interviews touching on a variety of different topics. Generally revolving around U.S. imperialism, politics, and socioeconomic conditions in the world. Expanded my worldview and changed the way I saw a lot of things — would highly recommend this text.
• The Midnight Library by Matt Haig
  Amazing work of fiction about a woman who gains access to all the different potential lives she could’ve lived. Great uplifting work of philosophical commentary. TW: discussion of: suicide, depression, mental illness.

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