I love words and writing and stories. Libraries and book stores are my favorite places. A few years ago, I started logging the books I read. I read a LOT and am not picky but once I started tracking, I noticed there were fewer Young Adult and Romance novels.
"If you love to read, or learn to love reading, you will have an amazing life. Period. Life will always have hardships, pressure, and incredibly annoying people, but books will make it all worthwhile. In books, you will find your North Star, and you will find you, which is why you are here.
Out of these flat almost two-dimensional boxes of paper will spring mountains, lions, concerts, galaxies, heroes. You will meet people who have been all but destroyed, who have risen up and will bring you with them. Books and stories are medicine, plaster casts for broken lives and hearts, slings for weakened spirits. And in reading, you will laugh harder than you ever imagined laughing, and this will be magic, heaven, and salvation. I promise."
Anne Lamott, A Velocity of Being: Letters to A Young Reader
This year has been kind of slow on the reading front. I’ve read 12 books, most recently Humans, by Brandon Stanton. His blog, Humans of NY, started as a photo project of New Yorkers. It didn’t take off until he started captioning the photos with a story about each person. Usually they’re incredibly sad and heart-wrenching. In the book, the themes are similar whether the person hails from New York City or Karachi, Pakistan. That’s one of the things I liked - the stories show the universality of being human.
I also liked reading about Stanton’s process. He chooses people randomly. He starts with the same question: “what is your greatest struggle right now?” It’s surprising he gets people to open up. He’s frequently told that his process “won’t work here” but it always does. And he talks about how the conversations feel familiar, even the ones done in faraway places in different languages through interpreters — he can tell the moment when someone shares an authentic answer.
I also appreciated that these are all short vignettes so it was easy to pick up, read a few and put it down again for long stretches.
Next up: “Whereabouts” by Jhumpa Lahiri.