Reading
I read almost everything I can get my hands on, which sounds noble until you see the shelves and realize it may just be a highly organized form of intellectual hoarding.
I don’t really have a single favorite genre. I have recurring obsessions.
Philosophy. History. Politics. Political psychology. Biography. Thrillers. Suspense. Literary fiction. Science fiction. Myth re-tellings. Classics - old and modern. Alternative storytelling. Essays. Newspapers.
Strange books that shouldn’t work but somehow do.
Occasionally books that absolutely do not work, and I still finish them out of spite.
I Read Wide, But Not Random
If there is a pattern, it’s probably this: I’m drawn to books that either tell a good story, ask a good question, or quietly rearrange how I think.
Preferably more than one at once.
If there is a pattern, it may be in the voices I keep returning to: Plato and the Stoics when I want to think more carefully, Stephen Fry when old myths need new breath, Orwell and Kafka when reality feels too polite, Agatha Christie when structure matters, Mick Herron when intelligence should arrive bruised, Asimov and Cixin Liu when scale becomes part of the story, Dawkins and Hitchens when ideas need air, and the occasional Dan Brown, Stephen King, or Wilbur Smith when I want momentum to do what philosophy sometimes refuses to.
That probably says more about my reading taste than any genre label ever could.
That’s why my shelves end up looking like a small argument between - Plato, Hitchens, Harris, Dan Brown, Marcus Aurelius, Stephen Fry, Mick Herron, Richard Dawkins, Agatha Christie, Cixin Liu, Orwell, and whatever else happened to catch me at the wrong time in a bookstore.
It looks chaotic.
It is, in fact, a system.
How I Usually Read
I rarely read one book at a time.
Usually it’s three:
- one at my work desk
- one beside the bed
- one in the commute bag
This is either a charming ritual or a sign of a damaged attention span. I prefer not to investigate too closely.
Some books I tear through without interruption, barely remembering to do responsible things like sleep.
Others take months.
Not because they’re bad, necessarily. Sometimes a book is just dense. Sometimes life gets in the way. Sometimes the book and I are in a long, passive-aggressive negotiation.
I read both paper books and on the iPad, depending on mood, light, convenience, font size, bag space, and whether I’m pretending to be minimal.
What I Seem To Return To
Looking at my shelves, if there is any real pattern, it’s not genre so much as gravitational pull.
I keep returning to books about:
- how people think
- how people fail
- how power works
- how history repeats with better branding
- how language shapes meaning
- how stories carry ideas
- how civilization functions, fractures, survives, or performs competence for a while
And then, just to keep the mood healthy, a thriller, a murder, a conspiracy, a detective, a doomed astronaut, or a slightly unstable genius usually enters the room.
The Shelves, As Evidence
The shelves here in my Berlin home are only part of the story.
They already hold philosophy, history, political theory, psychology, myth, science, literary fiction, thrillers, crime, speculative fiction, graphic storytelling, classics, modern classics, and a healthy number of books that suggest I either enjoy variety or lack self-restraint.
There are also another couple of hundred books back in Bangladesh, which means this is not a phase. It is infrastructure.
If nothing else, the shelves confirm two things:
- I read broadly
- I am extremely bad at behaving like someone with limited shelf space
Reading, For Me
I don’t read only for knowledge, and I don’t read only for pleasure.
I read for both, and for the interesting overlap where a book can entertain, disturb, teach, irritate, and stay with me long after it should have politely left.
Some books sharpen thought.
Some deepen feeling.
Some simply prove that another human, somewhere, once had the exact kind of strange mind that makes me feel less alone.
That may be the best kind.
Turning Pages
When I feel like writing back to what I read, some of it ends up on Turning Pages.
Not as formal criticism, exactly.
More as reading notes, reflections, arguments, admiration, occasional disappointment, and evidence that certain books refuse to remain private experiences.
Because some books deserve a review.
And some books deserve a small public reckoning.