In 2020 I read about 80-90 books. Not a bad achievement. My relationship with books has grown practical over the years: life problems became complicated and I found myself having to constantly use books to improve my wellbeing and to understand how the world works. So I said goodbye to the idyllic page-turning in my sweet childhood and waved hello to the cut-to-the-chase lingo of self-help and business. My reading regime developed through what was happening in life – daily challenges and people that impacted me.
Fortunately it took a shift in January. Romanced by my then relationship, I started my first book with Samuel Coleridge, reading his epic verses in tales. In fact, I was pleasantly surprised by how much I could enjoy poetry, especially when reading aloud with someone and debating interpretations. I felt I re-discovered the life-giving and beatifying power of words. This newfound epiphany encouraged me to explore Browning, Tennyson, Dante, Wordsworth, Eliot and some modern poetry. I even made a clumsy attempt to write a few in my journal.
I made a serious effort to challenge my short of patience with fictions, and stuck to classics to refine my taste. I am a fan of innuendos, euphemisms, and subtle lampoons: Orwell’s 1984 was a long-due good read. As to my thirst for eccentric characters, I dug out Maugham’s short novels – The Painted Veil, The Razor’s Edge and The Moon and the Six Pence. Maugham’s unadorned narrative and occasionally shrewd observations on human nature had made me forget about time and my troubles. People miss out if they give up on novels. May was a month of beating my head in Metamorphosis and The Unbearable Lightness of Being and revisiting Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby. The only blemish was Kundera’s work left me cold. A good story shouldn’t ground itself in bare philosophy. It just needs to have a sophisticated idea behind.
A few more later were great also: Nabokov’s Lolita, Jane Austin’s Pride and Prejudice, Woolf’s Miss Dalloway, Dickens’ Oliver Twist and A Christmas Carol, Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Grey, Camus’ The Stranger and Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Among modern fictions, A Thousand Splendid Suns and Harry Potter Series were entertaining experiences. These book gave great escapism and I liked all of them. But I went through most so quickly that I only got to just know them. At some point I have to pull them from the shelf and investigate again.
And of course I couldn’t escape everyday wrestles with life: the theme of 2020 was acquiring tools to understand my past and overcome trauma. Personal development continued to dominate my learning curve. I was grateful to have read Jordan Peterson’s work, 12 Rules for Life and Maps of Meaning, which is not only an astounding collection of philosophical and theological argumentations, but also gave me useful toolsets to reinterpret and guide my future. My relationship failure led me to Sam Harris’ Lying, Erich Fromm’s The Art of Being and The Art of Loving, Lindsay Gibson’s Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents and Scot Peck’s The Road Less Travelled. They helped lift some emotional burden from my chest and provided excellent literature to process mistakes.
Despite everything, my intellectual development could never stop, although I didn’t make as much progress as I would like in my philosophy and psychology quest. The Big Questions by Robert Solomon and The philosophy Book gave a comprehensive overview on subjects to explore in more depth. The Daily Stoic by Ryan Holiday was an accessible guide on ancient wisdoms on emotion regulation. One has to both learn to be in tune with emotions but when to be detached from them. A difficult balance to make.
As for psychology, I flipped through the Routledge Introduction Series on Jung for a better contextualisation on Peterson’s work. And I found that The Psychology Book made a good reference point to all the big names. Jonathan Haidt’s The Righteous Mind was a fantastic overview on moral intuition and how it can shape the way we think about what is right and wrong. Stumbling on Happiness by Daniel Gilbert, is a door to fascinating insights linking cognitive biases with our perceptions on happiness. I have learned to think with more compassion about my mind, and withstand inner criticisms more gracefully.
On a whole, I am happy with what I have learned last year. But I think I must rate 2020 lightly – I should have picked up a few more new topics, or else dived deeper into Foucault, or Jung. 2021 will be better though, with a more oriented plan and more…well, thinking.
Siming Lan 