I'm borderline illiterate, but I try to read as much as I can.
We all lack power in our lives (think about being a kid, can you freely travel? How many choices in your life are in your hands, and how many make those decisions for you?) and books are a way to get a little bit of power in our hands.
I dropped out of college twice. I tried really hard in college, but I couldn't ever fit into what my professors wanted. I also I had to contend with severe mental health issues and my untreated dysphoria. Normally college drop outs aren't supposed to accomplish a lot in life
But, there are ways to gain knowledge besides school. I also worked at a thrift shop named Goodwill in a really rich, arty neighborhood (that's sort of similar to where you live). People would donate books all the time, and I'd read whatever came through my hands before they hit the shelves. Everything from classic liteture, books on sports sociology, a book on how to design websites from the year 2003 (so it was super out of date) books on how to have a career if you are a retired ballaerina.
some of the stuff that people would donate would tell a story. One person donated three books on how to cook with beer and one book on how to stop being addicted to alcohol. Bare minimum, I would make an effort to read the last page of every book that came into the store. I don't even know why. Maybe it's because books are such mysteries; it's so difficult to read one, it's even more difficult for me to finish a book, and the reality we don't read most books, and so the final page of a book can be elusive, and so I figured if I had the privlege of having so many books in front of me, that it's nice to have a peak to where that book wanted to take us.
I loved the fancy literature books would often end with this sense of indefinite closure, and that the genre books such as detective stories would always have a direct, definitive end. Like a period at the end of a sentence
I mentioned a couple of times on these online blogs or whatever that I would buy you books every year for Christmas. I wanted to try to give you just one gift, a library. I I hoped to impart on you I habit of reading. what else you do with your life is your business, I just hoped for you to read so that you can have power.
Reading is very difficult for me, and yet I try anyways. as I write this I'm surrounded by a dozen half-read, unfinished books.
The only thing that you ever truly have in life is stories. Look at your room around you, none of those objects truly belongs to anyone; they decay, they get stolen and they get lost. and even if we outlive them, the moment we stop being alive they stopped being ours. I learned that working at Goodwill, after people would die, their relatives would donate these dead people's entire belongings, and I would pick through them, looking for things to sell, but also wondering about them with the same sort of wonder that I would see in the mystery of books. The only thing that you can ever have is a story. And when you read a book, it goes inside of you, and you carry that story with you the rest of your life. And that is power
anyways, here are my favorite books