Trying to Pick Books to Read

I’m really struggling at the moment. I read Les Miz and enjoyed that a lot—somehow, I found the time. But right now, work seems to have consumed so much of me. I’m exhausted by it. I think this is a great problem of the modern author. Pretty much everyone has to work two—or more—jobs. Trying to keep this balance is difficult. I love reading. It seems to me that reading develops your imagination, your empathy, and your knowledge of the world. We learn through fiction, for all good fiction is grounded in abstract truths from reality. And the more we read, the better we are at doing it. I often wonder what is the upper bound on an imagination. How big can a single person dream? The answer I come to is psychosis. From my perspective, psychosis is your imagination taking over your perception of reality. When you read, and you forget you are reading, merely just generating visuals and sensual details and narrative—are you not in a state of psychosis? How do we even go about controlling our imaginations? Sometimes it feels like you can have a cannon for an imagination, but you also have these tiny feeble arms and shoulders that cannot lift the cannon up or aim it at something sensible.

Reading helps.

The trouble comes with making a choice: What do I read next? I’ve found when someone buys me a book—something happening a lot more now!—I tend to queue up that one. Quite often it’s been bought because the person thought of me when reading it. I don’t know, it’s just sort of cool. It makes me feel less alone in the world—not that I am alone, of course [hey Lills 😉].

I’ve rambled enough.

JUST GO READ MORE.

Written on October 24, 2020