12 books, book 10 to 12
The end is here! Well, I have to admit I read all these books quite a while ago and didn’t have time to write the post about it all this time. Luckily, I wrote notes occasionally while I was reading. I tend to write snippets and notes on anything from scraps of paper, notebooks or my phone, so even if I am not very active on my blog, I am gathering quite a lot of things to edit and post – of course, that also takes time and a full time job combined with 3-4 hours of commuting every day doesn’t leave much room for hobbies or anything like that. I really wanted to tell you about these last books because I truly enjoyed them.
The first is called Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions by Edwin A Abbott. It is an absolutely brilliant story that truly explains dimensions in a way that anyone can understand.
There is a very great video of Carl Sagan online where you can see him explain the main concepts, which is a good place to start if you are curious.
The first part of the story describes a 2-dimensional world and life there but also describes other dimensions in contrast. In this 2-dimensional world one individual comes into contact with a 3 dimensional being and what follows is somewhat of an ontological shock and how this 2-dimensional individual deals with this new, broader understanding of the universe.
I started this because I wanted to change and become a better person, so in some ways this story was perfect. Truly changing is not as easy as I had originally thought, because everyday life, the people we talk to, the people we work with, the actual work we do – all of the things that is our life all contribute to us staying the same; we get up the same way, go through a morning routine, drink the same coffee when we get to work, think the same things about work and our colleagues or our family, we go out to dinner with friends on the weekends or something similar. It’s routine, our bodies don’t need our brains to go through all this, just like your hands remember a password your brain forgot.
Change is uncomfortable, we like the idea of ourselves being who we are, right? Sometimes, something happens that changes us dramatically, just like the ontological shock the 2-dimensional being experienced when confronted with the realisation that there were more dimensions in the universe than he had originally thought.
It’s not something we control, however, and when they happen, we have to go with the flow to survive and rebuild ourselves in light of this new world view we have. If we want to change more specifically, if we want to be less angry, less stressed, more happy, more loving, more compassionate or kind, it is a something that takes practice. We truly need to want to change, to go against all those thoughts and habits ingrained in our being from everyday life.
If you want to challenge your understanding of the world and see just how impossible it is to imagine something unimaginable, this story is for you.
Sometimes, being on the spectrum and communicating with a neurotypical feels exactly like communicating with a being from a different dimension – so different and alien does our experience of the world seem to me sometimes. In short, I loved this story, and I feel it could be beneficial to most of us to read it to help broaden their understanding of our world. It might even make us see the world a little differently, and thereby, see ourselves differently too.
As you may know already, I have been deeply fascinated by Daoism for a long time and I have read, and will re-read many times over, the Dao de Jing. I am always curious about how others interpret this great work and therefore wanted to give Laozi’s Dao De Jing by Ken Liu a try. Ken Liu has written many great stories of his own, but I was still a little surprised to see he had a translation of Dao De Jing as well – it intrigued me, and I was curious about what he had seen in this classic work.
It is a great interpretation with many little comments and thoughts of his own throughout. Some would call Dao De Jing a religious work, some philosophical, some probably something else, but for me it has always been a work that has helped me figure myself and my place in the world out. I see it as philosophical, a work that will have you return over and over again to various paragraphs or chapters to re-read, re-think and contemplate its content.
It can be easy, I feel, to get a little stuck in how I read the text, and it was deeply inspiring to hear this interpretation. Often, when facing a challenge in life or if I feel stuck, I return to the Dao De Jing and suddenly I read it in a new way or see the situation in a new light, get a new perspective and can move on from it or accept what I struggle to accept. Especially dealing with stress from work and school, I find this book helpful. It doesn’t give you the answer, but I feel it gives us a way to find our own answers to our own challenges.
Perhaps, I will not recommend reading just any version of Dao De Jing if one has no experience with Daoism, but I would definitely recommend this one. Ken Liu has done a great job here, his explanations and thoughts are easy to follow, and he has a lot to give both the novice and the experienced reader. The Dao De Jing gives us, through little chapters, thoughts on how we live and think about ourselves and the world around us. It is, in every form, one of the most inspirational texts I have read.
In fact, I felt so inspired from reading this, that I read The Tao of Pooh by Benjamin Hoff right after, a book I would not have chosen to read before. I did not read stories like Winnie the Pooh as a child. I didn’t really watch the cartoons or anything either and always assumed The Tao of Pooh was not at all for me. I was wrong, however. It is a brilliant, short little introduction to Daoism and well worth the read even if you have never heard of Winnie the Pooh. If you are interested in learning more on this topic, I would read them both starting with the sweet, uncomplicated introduction to Daoism in The Tao of Pooh by Benjamin Hoff, followed by the deeper, more adult interpretation of the base work Dao De Jing in Laozi’s Dao De Jing by Ken Liu.
Lastly, I read The Only Constant by writer and poet Najwa Zebian. I have read some of her work before and was very moved by her beautiful poetry. Since this challenge to myself was about changing myself to become a better person, I felt it quite a fitting book to end on. This book is really, in essence, about coming to terms with change in oneself and those around us. It helps us, teaches us, how to build a strong foundation within ourselves, so that we can love ourselves freely and weather any storm we might find ourselves in. It guides us to rebuild ourselves when we feel broken and to move on from things, situations and people hurt harm or hurt us. It’s about allowing ourselves to love again, to give our body time to heal even if your mind is racing ahead fleeing from the past.
To me, this was helpful not just because I have been in very unhealthy relationships with some very bad people, but also because I have been struggling with stress from work. I forgot that our body remembers a situation, a feeling, even if our minds feel we have moved on from that situation. Our body can be triggered by anything, and suddenly it remembers how a person hurt you, even if your mind has forgiven or even forgotten most of what happened.
I would always recommend any of her work, but this one is one of those books I feel we all benefit from reading.
Especially in the world we live in, with social media and pressure from life and work, it is good to slow down and feel, to reflect on how we feel and think, and to allow ourselves to love ourselves – both who we used to be, even if we want to change, and who we are becoming as we change.
Now, that was the end. All 12 books in 12 months. I did actually do this over a year, but I have not been able to find the time to write about them in time. Stress at work and school, financial challenges and health problems have taken up too much of my time and somehow, I forgot to do the things I love; all that which makes life worth it in the end. I am hoping to find that again, to make life worth it and spend more time on all those things that I have missed and still love even now. I am trying to find time for more of that childhood joy that I left behind when I started working and hopefully, I can find more time to write as well.
I did enjoy this challenge, and I will definitely do my best to read more books that are out of my comfort zone, read more books that can help me become a better person. I feel that it helps me think different thoughts, which makes it more easy for me to change and see myself and the world in ways I had never imagined – even if I don’t like or agree with what I read, I feel it has been, and is, a very healthy exercise to challenge our minds to understand other people’s point of view and thus broaden our own understanding of the world we all live in.
I have already started to read another book to continue this journey: Oxygen – The molecule that made the world by Nick Lane.
Quite a jump from most of my recent reads, but I felt it was time to try something different to move even more outside my comfort zone – I know absolutely nothing about how life began on earth, which is the topic of this book, nor do I know anything about biochemistry.
It is definitely not an easy read, but so far it is written in a language and style that makes it relatively easy to follow along. It is very interesting and even if there is a lot I don’t understand, I am learning a lot about the world I never knew.
I would encourage everyone to do something like this once in a while, if not 12 books in 12 months, then at least one book that is completely outside our comfort zone every year. I loved it so much, I don’t see myself stopping ever again. I will do my best in the future to find interesting books that I would for one reason or another chosen not to read before and read it to experience more of the world the I never knew existed.
Before, I would not have read Nick Lanes books because I believed I was not smart enough to understand it, but I thought I might give it a chance and even though I am out of my comfort zone and feeling a bit stupid because I didn’t know something, I am learning and growing in my understanding of our world and that is definitely worth it. If you were worried about this too, give one of his books a go anyway, and don’t give up after a few pages because you feel worried. Read it through and by the end, I think you might be as surprised as I was to realise how far we can come in our understanding of the world from just a few chapters.
