Nadia's Reading List Email for October 2020
We spent as much money as we could, and got as little for it as people could make up their minds to give us. We were always more or less miserable, and most of our acquaintances were in the same condition. There was a gay fiction among us that we were constantly enjoying ourselves, and a skeleton truth that we never did. To the best of my belief, our case was in the last aspect a rather common one.
Charles Dickens
I skipped last month’s reading list email because I was tired and had no energy. I am even more tired at the end of this month, but I don’t want to make a habit out of skipping.
This year holds the record for months passing by incredibly fast, with only these reading lists and paying rent to signify that October turned into November. In contrast to a shocking August, September and October have been much calmer, with horror and trauma being replaced by exasperation, when checking the news from Belarus went from an exhausted “Has it happened yet?” to a scarier “What if it won’t happen?”
Books have been a great relief from all of this though, and the biggest discovery of this year has been classical fiction. In the past I didn’t read fiction: I saw it as a waste of time, and I considered myself above it. Now I see it as the best way to recover from pain, to relax, to treat my soul to a pure art form. Also, I’ve already watched all the movies that seemed worth watching, and the only way for me to enjoy a good story now is to read a book. I don’t complain though.
Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
Oh man, that Dickens could tell a story, and this book is a real page-turner, though it is fairly long. Since Dickens published this book in installments in his own magazine, he had to make each installment exciting enough for the readers to buy the next one. The book is fast-paced, easy to read, and just genuinely funny. Who knew that those Victorian-era humans could joke or have fun! What I liked most was how much I could relate to the main character of the book: I knew exactly what he felt, I’ve had the same exact thoughts at various points in my life. Our lived experiences are very different, yet Dickens managed to capture something true about human nature that I could relate to.
The Diary of a Bookseller by Shaun Bythell
Shaun Bythell runs Scotland's largest second-hand bookshop, and this book is written in the form of a diary that documents the day-to-day realities of his job. I think the motivation for this book was to discourage anyone from opening their own bookstore, but somehow it does the exact opposite. The author is sarcastic and pessimistic, but he obviously loves books and his trade. I learned a lot about the mechanics of running a bookshop and how the book trade has been affected by online shopping. I also became even more convinced that the experience of buying a real book in a real bookstore from a real person can never be replaced by Amazon and its faceless algorithms (which don't even work).
Since the book is written in the form of short diary entries, you can get through it in short chunks of 10-15 minutes at a time. Definitely a better way to spend your free time than Twitter.
The Strange Death of Europe: Immigration, Identity, Islam by Douglas Murray
This book is depressing and soul-crushing, but everyone needs to read it. It tells the story of Europe’s suicide, which we are all witnessing right before our eyes. Terror attacks are again top of mind, and while journalists and leftists are busy coming up with disgusting excuses for what has happened, everyone else who is in touch with reality knows full well what turned Western Europe into the hopeless place that it is.
I was still working as a news editor when the central event of the book–the migrant crisis of 2015–was unfolding, and I closely followed the terror attacks that swept through Europe shortly after. Curiously enough, my mind has erased that information, probably as a safety precaution, and the book brought it all back. I guess we all need to pretend things are fine to continue living normal lives, and things that are too shocking to comprehend need to be forgotten. Yet things are not fine, European civilization is screwed, and there is little if anything that can be done to save it.
Late Bloomers: The Power of Patience in a World Obsessed with Early Achievement by Rich Karlgaard
It has become fashionable to think that unless you have become successful and famous by the age of 30, you can dismiss yourself as a failure and stop trying. This book disproves this myth and makes a case that many of us are late bloomers and don’t achieve our full potential until much later in life. The author tells the stories of many successful late bloomers and shares tips on how not to lose hope when you are considered too old by modern society obsessed with youth and early achievement.
Happy reading,
Nadia.