Analyzing my monthly reading list tells me what I care about at the moment and maybe also the state of my being.
In order to help myself organizing my thoughts from my reading in February and March, as I have started and done for December and January as a way to document my life, I looked at the books I have read over these two months and realized that there are certain topics and issues that I seemed to care more about and areas that the well-being of my mind and heart seemed to need ‘nourishment’ more than others. If you are like me in believing that the books that draw our attention at any moment in time tells a lot about ourselves, what we care and what we need, then it would be a good idea to analyze your reading list and try to draw some clues about what you are going through and hopefully to gain some inspirations from there as well.
The first book I read in Feb was a long historical saga centered on Winston Churchill and through the lens of this brave man and his family, the readers are able to get a glimpse of how it was like in the darkest hours of London in the horror of the World War II. I feel that the part of the book Splendid and Vile by Eric Larson most vividly brought forth to me was what great genuine leadership of Winston Churchill was, it left me feeling both awed and moved from time to time when I reminisce on the book. I guess when the world around us is looking more and more broken and surreal, our heart can be longing for the kind of heroic bravery, clarity and courage of a great leader like Churchill, whose optimism, dedicated service to his nation, and unfailing belief, as any true hero would have, that justice would eventually prevail is truly inspiring.
After Splendid and Vile, I went on to read Mastery by Robert Greene. To me it is an unusual self-help, self-improvement book as it is not only tells readers the typical whys of the importance to do certain things in order to improve our life and hows to change certain things in our old life if we want to achieve goals we set out to achieve, but it actually lay out details, sometimes almost step-by-step like a manual book would, how to go about gaining mastery in anything field. I totally enjoy the true accounts and stories of how some famous people gained their mastery in their respective field and how Greene uses these true examples to illustrate his points. While I almost done reading the book, I simultaneously started Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert, just to change things up, as I sometimes do. I felt these two books are kind of onto similar point in many ways. Gilbert puts big emphasis on being being curious and open while she can’t stress enough the importance of being discipline and keeping at the things you do over and over again for the reason of her success. Discipline, as it shows, is a super key to success and mastery in any field, even in creative industry.
Free Play by Stephen Nachmanovitch is a book on being spontaneous and the inner sources of spontaneous creation. As I went through this book, I could not stop marveling at the amount of wisdom and insight that the author offers to the reader and is packed into this not too long book. One additional point this book offers, on top of the emphasis on being structured and discipline that Mastery and Big Magic suggest, is the importance of being “authentic”. Allow me to borrow from the book summary from Audible (as I listened to this book): “The whole enterprise of improvisation in life and art, of recovering free play and awakening creativity, is about being true to ourselves and our visions. It brings us into direct, active contact with boundless creative energies that we may not even know we had.” To be honest, this is one book I will reread again soon, and try to apply some of its many ideas on my life and the things I pursue.
Man’s Search for Meaning by Nazi survivor psychiatrist Viktor Frankl answers my ever long quest for the best answer to the question of “what’s the meaning of life?”. At least for the time being Frankl’s answer rests my case. Frankl says there are three ways man can obtain meaning for his life. First, through jobs or deeds, by providing service to others, this is obvious. Second, through experience of something or someone, by going through experiences life has offered, loving people you love and being loved back. Third, lastly and slightly unexpected, through suffering. Frankl made a point to stress the suffering he meant is not just any kind of suffering but the unavoidable kind, the kind of suffering brought on to your life but is outside your control, for example, his personal experience in concentration camp. The author mentioned as he recounted his experience in the camp that someone had said that the thing that he was scared the most, above everything else, was that all this suffering was not worth it. This strikes me like lightning. Life does not need any conditions for it to carry meaning, life’s meaningfulness is unconditional, as Frankl claims. Man can decide however, even in the toughest circumstances, for his suffering to mean something. This inner spiritual freedom is the most precious and it gives meaning to life. A little paradoxical but it makes sense to me.
I ended the month of March with another saga-like account The Code Breaker by famed writer Walter Isaacson. It is about the earth-shattering discovery of gene-editing tool Crispr Cas9 with the super-star scientist Jennifer Doudna as the central figure. When I began the book, I wondered why Isaacson wrote about a very contemporary scientist, though a hugely successful one and a Nobel-laureate, it is still unusual given his record of writing memoirs for history-changing names like Einstein, Benjamin Franklin, Steve Jobs and Leonardo da Vinci. When I finished the book, I thought I understood why. It is for the same reason Nobel committee awarded the prize to the scientist who is responsible for the discovery of the technology that was made only 8 years prior. The shortest time between the recipient’s work and the award in Nobel’s history. Crispr Cas9 changes everything human can do, from bio-science point of view. It ushers mankind into a new era, literally allowing man to decipher the code of life, playing God, in a way. It is an exciting account of how the scientist Doudna and others came to do what they do, their journey to their respective huge discoveries, their motivations and inspirations, and dramas of the intense competitions, controversies, and race to patent, fame, recognition and more. This book is also very layered. A big part of the book devotes to discussions and reflections on ethics and moral issues surrounding the use of Crispr Cas9 gene editing technology, including story of the 2018 Crispr baby scandal. It ends with the real-time account of how scientists race to, this time not to personal fame and benefits but more altruistically, use the technology to help combat Covid-19. A very worthwhile read.
Today is the last day of the first quarter of the year. It felt like the year has just started not long ago, but as it always is with time, it goes by without we even notice much. I can however take solace in going through my reading list, it makes me feel like I have gotten something solid out of the time that flies by. Reflecting on my reading for the past months has also helped me understand my overall state of being at this point of my life in the world, where my mind and heart focus, how I can use what I learn, refocus, then continue to stride forward, as we always do in life.
