In A History of Reading Alberto Manguel wrote: “We are what we read.” Manguel believed that we interiorize books and absorb them like food. Books then nourish us with arguments and provide us with intellectual energy and background.
Lofty, right?
That may be what happens to a select group of readers but not to me. In the rush of ordinary living, my daily reading competes with bingeable series, movies, and podcasts. Much as I would like it to be as Manguel declares, the majority of the titles I consume fade in a couple of months. More than once, I have picked up a novel from my shelves, started reading, and realized as I turn a page that there are underlined passages or comments on the margins, comments I have made. I am the human version of Dory, Nemo’s memory-challenged friend — hopelessly forgetful.
There are exceptions: books that don’t dim or go away but stay with me and grow roots, books that have changed my world — my mind benders.
I remember distinctly the afternoon I began reading The Hour of the Star, and fell in love with the prose of the great Brazilian writer Clarice Lispector. And then there is Thais, an out-of-fashion novel by Anatole France, the story of a hermit monk and a beautiful courtesan. I bought the slim 1931 edition in a second-hand bookstore. I’ve read better novels but none that taught me structure in a clearer way. Not only do I remember Thais’ plot and switching POV but the beautiful illustrations by Raphael Frieda, one of the reasons I bought it.
Every title in the following infographic changed something in me. Altogether — the ones I would take to an island, others I stumbled across, my childhood loves as well as those in other categories, and of course the cloud of poets — are a distillation of the library of my mind; they are my foundation, they are me. Don’t take them, however, as unchanging or exclusive reading. Although those in the infographic have pride of place, there are others in those niches. For example, among my childhood faves, are comics, all kinds of comics, historical, fantasy, mythological series that I devoured.
Mind benders is not a list carved in stone. As I read, I add to it. Here are four examples from my most recent reading past:
The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy. For the incredible language and setting.
The Man Who Loved Dogs by Leonardo Padura, a masterpiece of structure and pace. I read the first two pages and ordered three other Padura books. After devouring them, I set aside my TBR list and jumped into a year-long reading digression. From the Padura books I went to Lincoln In the Bardo by George Saunders and from Saunders to Chekhov, Gogol, and Babel. Books are linked; one leads to another.
Last year, as I was dutifully following a LitHub list of the most important books of the last twenty years, I came across The Known World by Edward P. Jones, the 2004 Pulitzer price for Fiction, a novel on slavery in Virginia. I fell in love with its universal characters and Jones’ dazzling prose.
From E. P. Jones I navigated backwards in time and fell in love with Zora Neale Hurston and Their Eyes Were Watching God because of the folklore and her lyrical prose. Without a doubt, I will add more books to the Mind Benders and my shelves. The question is where to put them. ∼