So I found it a real shock when, over the last few months, I lost my ability to get lost in a book. I couldn’t engage, I couldn’t concentrate for more than a page before my mind would wander elsewhere. I was sure it was the book I was reading but I tried several, by authors I’ve devoured in the past, with the same result. I couldn’t do it. And I found myself longing for an escape from the difficulties I was facing in day-to-day life, and I found myself turning to the screen.
For hours.
For days.
I’ve never binge-watched anything until I pounded through several entire Netflix series over the course of a few months. It wasn’t cheap, either, with internet paid by the megabyte, but it didn’t matter. I didn’t recognize myself for many reasons during this season, but that was one of the biggest ones.
Thankfully, though, I have found myself, in the last couple of weeks, able to devour a book again in the way I used to. I bought Becoming by Michelle Obama in the Seattle airport and finished it by the time I reached Freetown, Sierra Leone (where the plane stops on its way to Monrovia, my final destination) (with a few hours of sleep and a full-on sprint through Amsterdam during that time, too). It was great. I’d definitely recommend it. In the last three days (over the weekend) I read three books, two of which I would HIGHLY recommend:
Born a Crime by Trevor Noah – he was born to a white father and black mother during apartheid South Africa, when that was a crime, and he does a great job of exploring the heinous realities of apartheid while sharing funny stories of his childhood antics.
Educated by Tara Westover – she was born into a fundamentalist, survivalist family in Idaho, didn’t go to school until she was 17, and yet somehow got her doctorate and studied at Harvard and Cambridge. I couldn’t put it down, and neither could Bill and Melinda Gates, I guess. So go for it.
Our world today is deeply divided, with people choosing ‘sides’ based on shared hatred instead of shared values. For me, I feel it’s more important than ever to read stories of those who were raised and believe different than me; it’s so easy to limit my news feeds and the people I follow or read to just those I agree with or share my belief system… but if I do that, my world gets narrower and narrower, honestly? I’m not interested. I want to experience and be lost in and visit and witness and serve the whole wide, colorful, different, messy, confusing, beautiful world. I’m hungry for books and perspectives of people who don’t look like me and think like me and didn’t grow up like me. Here’s what’s on my reading list for the next few months (where I should be able to have LOTS of reading time!)
The Girl with Seven Names: Escape from North Korea by Hyeonseo Lee
Sisters First by Jenna Bush Hager and Barbara Pierce Bush
The Last Girl: My story of Captivity and my fight against the Islamic State by Nadia Murad
Hillbilly Elegy by J.D. Vance
Right now I’ve also got Richard Rohr’s advent devotional going, a few pages every day, and I’m also enjoying What If? Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions by Randall Munroe. It’s not one that you inhale like a biography or fiction, but one you go back to for both a chuckle and I always learn something new.
What books would you recommend?? I’m on a biography/memoir kick right now but I’m very open to any genre. Send me your recommendations on Facebook or comment on this blog!
Thanks, reader friends – Krissy
P.S. In case you were wondering, I did read three books last weekend and recommended only two; the one I wouldn’t recommend in John Grisham’s new book, the Reckoning. I’m sad to admit it, as he’s one of my long-time favorite authors, but his last several books have been disappointing… the story was predictable and dragged on too long. It’s never a good thing when you’re thinking to yourself, geesh, I just want to be done with this book so I can move on to something better!
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