The first time I remember reading a book to completion, I was 11 and it was in French and titled ‘Les malheurs de Sophie’. I remember my curiosity taking over and time flying by. I was experiencing the feeling every reader knows too well, of being lost in a universe unlike your own and time seemingly stopping in this life as you dive into another world. I have read multiple books ever since, and my love for reading has fallen and risen depending on my life circumstances but the impact reading has had on me is palpable. It increased my ability to express myself, my level of empathy for situations that I’ve never lived, my factual knowledge of the world, and last but not least, my overall appreciation of the world. Reading, for me, has always been a path to a better quality of life. Here are three books that most impacted my point of view as a reader and why you should read them too.
Book 1: The Magic by Rhondha Byrne
It’s rare for me to get a book that has ideas so radical that I didn’t even know a bit of them. Such was the situation when I opened Rhonda Byrne’s book ‘ The Magic’ for the first time at 14. I had already read another book by Rhonda Byrne, called ’The Secret’, but all the teachings of the law of attraction just looked confusing to me. I half believed them half doubted them. I figured that believing them seemed to increase my mood and quality of life but I didn’t truly understand them. The first of her teachings I fully grasped are those in ‘The magic’. She talked about how gratitude is a magical component you can add on anything to improve it. A grateful life was a happier, more loving, kinder type of life. I was hooked and felt tremendously at peace. Adopting a grateful attitude regardless of any situation I was in, made me feel invincible. It was clear to me that life events could not be subtracted to a level where I have nothing to be grateful for, if living itself was a thing to be grateful for. I read that book and listened to its audiobook over and over until I grew tired of it. But the practice of gratefulness strongly remained in my life.
Book 2: The Art of Loving by Erich Fromm
I was around 18 when I read Erich Fromm’s book ‘The Art of Loving’. At the time, I didn’t expect it to be anything special, I had to read it for an English class assignment and I found it rather too small to be any impactful. It made no sense to me for a college-level advanced English class to be assigning books that small. But when I started reading it, I found the lessons in there to be transformational. Erich Fromm deciphers the mystery that we call love and explains how it’s not really something we ‘fall’ into. He explains how the ‘magic’ that most people use to measure the quality of love is really based on their own prior loneliness and makes a case for how learning to love as an art form can be quite fulfilling. I had never thought of loving as an art I needed to learn. Up until that point, I had lived life thinking that love can never be understood and its mystery feeds its quality i.e the less logical it is, the more in love you are. Matter of fact, I had assumed that divorces were a result of the demystification of love in long-term relationships. This book changed my relationships with the people I love for the better and I would highly recommend it to any human out there.
Book 3: The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows by Joe Koenig
I had never known the power of naming one’s feelings until I picked up a copy of ‘ The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows’ by Joe Koenig. Koenig uses less popular and sometimes foreign words to describe feelings we know too well but rarely acknowledge in the current dialogue. It’s unsurprising that most of these words are foreign as different cultures have different feelings they acknowledge more than others and thus, have words for. I already knew that the lack of a word for a feeling can impact how we feel something, as we seldom allow ourselves to feel that which we don’t understand. For example, I come from a culture that doesn’t have a word for ‘Depression’. For the longest time, I thought depression was just too much sadness until I moved to a foreign country and I encountered that word. Similarly, I felt embarrassed learning that there are different mental diseases since in my culture, we really have one blanket term for all mental diseases. As I was reading Joe Koenig’s book, I felt human, understood, and not alone. It was so satisfying to find feelings that I have trouble understanding myself explained to me by someone else. It was like a balm for my anxiety-ridden mind.
In conclusion..
I didn’t set out to be an avid reader, it just happened. Books found me when I needed them most of my childhood. However, as a grown-up, I know the values I get from reading enough, that I now cultivate a culture of reading often. Lately, I listen to audiobooks mostly since I like the freedom it affords me to do everything else while listening. But it has become a habit I cultivate. Instead of listening to music, I pop in an audiobook. It keeps me updated on different events in the world, it makes me empathetic, happy, and savvy. If you’re not already into reading, that may be because you haven’t found a book that interests you yet. Think of a topic that interests you and then pick up a book about it. You may be surprised!