Tag Archives: Reading

On My Mind

Books Are My Happy Place

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I spent the day surrounded by books and it was great.

Early in the afternoon I went to the Mid-Manhattan branch of the New York Public Library and browsed around there looking for a novel. I’ve been reading a lot of nonfiction this year and my roommate, noticing this, recently gave me a novel that she had just finished. I read it in a few days and loved every word. Sometimes it’s nice to get caught up in someone’s fictional life. Knowing that there will be resolution in 200 pages or so is comforting. At the library, I picked up a novel to get me through the week and put in a hold request for a political science book that I’ve been eyeing for a while. (Because understanding the world is, after all, a lot more important than understanding the convoluted family relationships of fictional characters.)

The Stephen A. Schwartzman Building, the NYPL’s research library, is across the street from the Mid-Manhattan Library and I headed over there exclusively to take pictures. As an NYPL member, I actually can take out books from the Schwartzman Building, sit and read in the gorgeous reading rooms, and conduct research. However, most of what I’ve been wanting to read lately is available through regular library circulation so I haven’t taken the opportunity to do that. (Note the word most.)

Once inside, though, I couldn’t stop smiling.

If everything the world’s religions say about  life after death is true, I want to end up in a library at the end of my time in this world. Or a bookstore. Maybe I can go the Harry Potter route and come back as a ghost! (Thinking of that, is there a Hogwarts Library ghost? Hermione would know.)

I had planned on checking out an art exhibitions today and it made sense to attend the one at the Morgan Library & Museum, which used to be JP Morgan’s personal library. There are currently exhibits on Martin Luther and Charlotte Brontë, as well as several others. My favorite part by far, however, was exploring the rooms that contained Morgan’s floor-to-ceiling bookshelves. I kept trying to touch the spines of his thousands of volumes of various shapes and sizes, and was continuously disappointed that the museum staff had done such a good job installing glass panes to protect the books from eager fingers like mine. Illuminated manuscripts were on display everywhere, which I so love.

Being around books makes me feel warm and happy, which was perfect considering the dreary day outside. I just love the endless opportunities to learn, imagine, and step into someone else’s world for a while. There’s real magic in that.

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I’ve been adding to the reading list that I linked at the beginning of this post and I’ll hit publish on that one before 2016 is over. Keep an eye out and let me know what you’ve been reading!

A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies. . . . The man who never reads lives only one. – George RR Martin

On My Mind

What I’m Reading

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I find television very educating. Every time somebody turns on the set, I go into the other room and read a book. – Groucho Marx

I’ve never been much of a television person. Part of this stems from my parents’ rules about TV when my siblings and I were growing up. They went something like this:

  1. If it’s not on PBS Kids, you can’t watch it.

And then when we got older it was:

  1. You can watch Survivor with us and we’ll go over your spelling words during commercials.
  2. Well, if your homework is done you can also watch CSI with us after Survivor.

A few things changed when I went away to college and since I’ve lived in my own apartments, but I still don’t watch a lot of TV. The most TV watching I have ever done was the last year I spent on Westminster Road; my roommate and I watched the entire Mad Men series because she was convinced I’d love it. She was right.

Generally though, I much prefer to lose myself in someone else’s thoughts and learn as much as I can while doing it. Ergo, I read.

When we were little, my mum would take us to the library before every road trip. We used to drive to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina every summer (about a 16-hour trip including stops) and our family loved books in the car and books on the beach. My sister and I would pick out as many books as the library would let us check out at once. I think it was around 20. We’d coordinate and organize and by the end of the trip, we each would have read all of them.

The trouble with airplane travel, however, was that heavy books made for heavy bags. I remember at least one instance where all of our bags were overweight on an international flight because of the number of books we’d packed. Oops. As much as I do love reading from, holding, touching, cuddling up with, and flipping through physical books, my Kindle (the boring one without a backlight or wifi) is my most necessary travel possession.

Since I am an avid reader and have been purposefully educating myself this year, I thought I’d make a list of the books I’ve read over the course of 2016. (We won’t get into the sheer volume of articles, which number easily in the hundreds.) I make no zero to actually track any of this, so I’m sure there are a few books I’ve missed and a few that I actually read in 2015. I’ve read more nonfiction this year than any other year (literally ever) but the volume of reading is pretty typical.

Nonfiction
The Age of Sustainable Development – Jeffrey Sachs
Altruism: The Power of Compassion to Change Yourself and the World – Matthieu Ricard
The Art of Happiness – Dalai Lama and Howard Cutler
The Art of Loving – Erich Fromm
Being Peace – Thich Nhat Hanh
Blood Oil: Tyrants, Violence, and the Rules that Run the World – Leif Weinar
Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed – Jared Diamond
College: What It Is, Was, and Should Be – Andrew Delbanco
The Consolations of Philosophy – Alain De Botton
Creating Capabilities – Martha Nussbaum
Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead – Brené Brown
Doing Good Better: How Effective Altruism Can Help You Make a Difference – William MacAskill
Empowering Global Citizens: A World Course – Fernando Reimers et al.
Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less – Greg McKeown
Ethics – Benedict de Spinoza
In Defense of a Liberal Education – Fareed Zakaria
Inside Coca-Cola: A CEO’s Life Story of Building the World’s Most Popular Brand – Neville Isdell and David Beasley
Moral Failure: On the Impossible Demands of Morality – Lisa Tessman
The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values – Sam Harris
On Writing – Stephen King
Peace Education – Nel Noddings
Stubborn Attachments: A Vision for a Society of Free, Prosperous, and Responsible Individuals – Tyler Cowen
Sustainable Well-Being: Concepts, Issues, and Educational Practices – edited by Frank Deer et al.
What Kind of Creatures Are We? – Noam Chomsky
Who’s in Charge?: Free Will and the Science of the Brain – Michael S. Gazzaniga
Zen in the Art of Writing – Ray Bradbury

Fiction
11/22/63 – Stephen King
The Beautiful and Damned – F. Scott Fitzgerald
Black Tickets – Jayne Anne Phillips
The Bridge of San Louis Rey – Thornton Wilder
The Brothers Karamazov – Fyodor Dostoyevsky
The Course of Love – Alain De Botton
The Dharma Bums – Jack Kerouac
The Idiot – Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World – Haruki Murakami
John Dies at the End – David Wong
The Martian Chronicles – Ray Bradbury
Mister Pip – Lloyd Jones
People of the Book – Geraldine Brooks
Rabbit, Run – John Updike
Sharp Objects – Gillian Flynn
The Stranger – Albert Camus
Tender is the Night – F. Scott Fitzgerald
This Side of Paradise – F. Scott Fitzgerald

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Currently, I have about half a dozen novels on my Kindle waiting to be read, three books on hold at the library, two books I need to return to the library, and my most recently purchased book in my night table drawer. Last night I started Horns by Joe Hill.

If you’re looking for me later today, you’ll find me with a cup of coffee in an East Village café keeping company with Sex at Dawn: How We Mate, Why We Stray, and What It Means for Modern Relationships by Christopher Ryan and Cacilda Jetha.

I’ll update this list again by the time we say goodbye to 2016. Stay tuned and happy reading!

On My Mind

Rainy Sunday

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Today is cold, gray, and wet. I bundled up in my navy raincoat, plaid scarf, and flowered Doc Martens I’ve had since college and I was still cold. The air was full of the dampness that goes straight to the bones. After two years in Southeast Asia, I’m not so good at damp or cold. That’s going to take some practice. Nothing like trial by fire, right? (Except in this case it’s trial by rain.)

Today is also lonely. I woke up knowing I would spend the day by myself, which is fine when that’s what I want to do. When I want to be around people, engage in meaningful conversation, and share myself with others I find it very difficult to be in own company. That’s the kind of feeling I had today when I woke up, which took me by surprise because I spent almost all of yesterday with a friend.

I fought the urge to cuddle back underneath the sheets when my alarm went off just to shorten the amount of time I’d have to spend alone. But I’ve been down this road before so I know better than that. I forced myself out of bed and outside for a quick, cold, wet run. Did yoga to return some heat to my joints. Left the house.

That’s key. Leave the house. It’s easy to get trapped in a cycle of rumination and distasteful self-pity when alone in my apartment. When I’m out, even when I’m out by myself, there are people to watch, conversations to overhear, places to go.

Made my way to the library to pick up George Orwell’s 1984. I’ve never read it and although I’m in the middle of two other books right now (What Kind of Creatures Are We? by Noam Chomsky and How Happy Became Homosexual by Howard Richler) today felt like a “curl up with a novel” sort of day. That’s something I’m always happy to do alone.

And by alone I mean in the company of strangers and a cup of coffee at B Cup Café in the East Village.

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I certainly wasn’t the only one waiting out the rain with a hot beverage!

The music, atmosphere, and food options were good enough for me to order a second coffee and a breakfast wrap for lunch. Breakfast is delicious at all times of day.

That’s when I ran into the problem of what to do next. There’s only so much caffeine one can drink in a day. And I’m bad at sitting.

So I headed home. Stopped at the farmers’ market to pick up some things on the way. Put on Bon Iver’s new album (again). Thought about all the times over the past 12 months that I’d been lonely and told myself all that would end when I moved to New York.

Thought about how wrong I was.

On the bright side, I’ve had a lot of time to think. Time that I desperately needed. I don’t know whether I’m in a better place now than I was in August, but I do know that I’m in a different place. That’s definitely a step in the right direction, though I don’t know what direction that is.

Maybe this time alone will help me figure it out.