Books I read in 2011 (in the order seen in the above image):

The Wrong Place by Brecht Evans
The Elephant Vanishes by Haruki Murakami
The Hustler by Walter Tevis
Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys
The Sweet Life in Paris by David Lebovitz
The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin
Life, On the Line by Grant Achatz
Richard Yates by Tao Lin
Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer
Love in a Dish and Other Stories by MFK Fisher
Plan for Chaos by John Wyndham
Bossypants by Tina Fey
What I Talk About When I Talk About Running by Haruki Murakami
The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion
The Lottery and Other Stories by Shirley Jackson
Friday Night Lights by Henry Bissinger
Why We Broke Up by Daniel Handler
Downtown Owl by Chuck Klosterman

I read more books in a span of a week than I had in month(s) towards the end of the year. Reading Friday Night Lights, it being such an easy read, and me being in Calgary and not wanting to touch a computer (my body is in pain and I want to improve my odds on not getting arthritis) - it created a momentum and routine that made it more conducive to reading. Albeit, the books I read after Friday Night Lights aren’t necessarily literature heavy weights, but it sure felt good to be okay with passing time by just reading a book (a thing I find harder and harder to do these days).

I hope this year will hold more of those moments for me.

Fingers crossed 2012!

10:29 pm  •  16 January 2012

Vintage Books, August 2009. Cover design by John Gall. Cover photograph by Masao Kageyama

BOOKS READ 41: WHAT I TALK ABOUT WHEN I TALK ABOUT RUNNING

More like, “What I do, and why I do it (ps - because I want to and who cares. p.p.s - I do, but I don’t need you to.)”

I really enjoyed this book. I have been enjoying more non-fiction, memoir type things lately, maybe it’s because I am looking for some kind of advice, and this book definitely steadied a lot of thoughts in my mind by giving them more words and depth and understanding. Also memoirs are easier to read. I think at least.

The book is about Murakami’s love for running and his thoughts around it. You could easily replace running with anything and all the things said in the book would have still made sense and rang true.

He runs for many reasons. There’s the physical - he sits at a desk all day and if he wants to live a long healthy life that includes writing more books - he needs to be in good shape. And then there’s all those other reasons that aren’t physical. And these are the interesting ones. The ones that make you feel okay about whatever it is you do. And these reasons are really simple. He does it to stop thinking. He does it because it suits him. He does it as a routine and it becomes a meditative act. He just…does it. And that’s that. And I like that sort of non explanation - because that is how things are - they are and you don’t really need an explanation for any of it. You can search for one and make one - but you’ll find in the end that just accepting that it just is is more calming and allows you to carry on in a not so heavy, angst ridden way. 

It makes me think why I put aside time for certain things. Like this blog for instance. To be honest, I kind of shudder each time I think about this blog. I first started this blog because I had just graduated from design school, and my first job out was working at a used bookstore. I begged for that job. I was grasping at straws, I didn’t get a design job right away and freaked out and thought I needed to make some kind of money, and for some reason thought that working at a used bookstore was a good idea.

And it was nice at first. I got to be in a nice store surrounded by books and to talk and think about them.

But oh man, it got so, so boring after awhile. It wasn’t very busy and I had been on such a high paced schedule in school that I didn’t know how to relax and just read and enjoy that. I read so much that reading got boring. But I had a lot of energy in me from just graduating and was still quite critical in that everything I came into contact with, I had so much to say. And one thing that I had finally learned by the end of school was that if you have a lot of something, that something being information, that you should do something with it - apply it. I know. Obvious. But I had all these thoughts about the books I read and had to do something with it.

So I started this blog.

And for awhile there I had a lot to say about the things I read.

But now.

I can barely get myself to finish a book. It takes me forever. I still love going to bookstores and getting piles of books - but all that really happens to them in the end is they sit pretty on a shelf and the pile just grows and grows. I like the idea of reading all these books, but when it comes time to sit down and read them - I’d rather do something else. I have so much that I want to do - and I have, haha, read a lot of books, some of them really good, that it’s like, do I really want to spend all these hours reading these books and writing about them when I can learn a new thing like how to make pottery or go swimming or something? I think too much about the amount of time I have to do things and it seems so short and I get so scattered that I should just learn to commit to the first thought that popped in my head and see it through.

And then this blog gets neglected and neglected.

I’m not the type of person to start something and not really see it through. I realize now how non existent my sense of time was when I started this blog. I never imagined that I would still be writing in it 3 years later and how that would feel.

It feels like a slog.

But that’s part of the reason why I like this blog now. The reasons why I liked and did this blog from when I first started it is totally different from now. I do like and absolutely hate that this blog is a challenge. That each entry that I start is painful to write at first, but once I write that one sentence that sets off all the other thoughts - it becomes gratifying because I have broken through a great amount of laziness in me. And that gratification brings me back again and again even though it feels like I am starting over each time - but I know in some way it is building upon and refining something within me and just needs time to manifest. Also this blog has been a nice document and indication of time.

And so that is why I do this - even though everything I write on here is so few and far between.

And that is why I read - to break the things I don’t like about myself within me - to break with what is around me - and to just be in a story and come out slightly different.

2:13 am  •  21 December 2011

Penguin Books - Great Food 2011. Cover design: Coraline Bickford-Smith

BOOKS READ 40: LOVE IN A DISH AND OTHER PIECES BY M.F.K FISHER

M.F.K Fisher is considered to be the ultimate in food writing. I read nothing but praise and longings to be her and I was so excited to read her work and to join all these people in the cult of M.F.K Fisher.

I find her kind of boring.

I mean, a lot of her writing is from a time past, and I suspect many people like her because she is able to write well and poetically about things like life before a refrigerator (and oh, me, oh, my, dealing with fruit and sigh, cheese, before it gets spoiled) and eating course after course at a small, quaint restaurant in rural France. She writes about a simpler time, and it kind of makes you want a simpler life, or to make what seems like the mundane and simple of your life into a sort of everyday art.

And people who are inspired by her are able to do that and I am inspired and in awe of them.

M.F.K Fisher is just too far removed from me that all that she writes about is just so unrelatable.

There was one story though in this book that I did enjoy and that has made me have enough faith in M.F.K Fisher that I would read her writing again - just not any time soon. It’s the opening story of this book, Uncle Evans. She talks about how when she was a young girl, her Uncle Evans invited her for what would be her first longest train ride ever. They were dining in the meal car and he asked her what she wanted to eat. To which she mumbled that she didn’t care. And he said, You should never say that again, dear girl. It is stupid, which you are not. It implies that the intentions of the host are basically wasted on you. So make up your mind, before you open your mouth. Let him believe, even if it is a lie, that you infinitely prefer the exotic wild asparagus to the banal mushrooms, or vice versa. Let him feel that it matters to you…and even that he does! He went on to say All this, may someday teach you about the art of seduction, as well as the more important art of knowing yourself.

Boom.

Couldn’t have said it better myself Ms. Fisher.

It’s important to be decisive. And then after that, the harder part. Being decisive in what you want and holding to it.

And I think it’s something that is a constant process until the end of our days.

12:58 am  •  18 October 2011

BOOKS READ 39: EATING ANIMALS BY JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER

I have a pretty strong relationship to food. I like to read about it. To make it. To think about it. And to share it.

Food is just one of the (very) few things that I am always completely sure about. One of the things that I always thought I knew when it came to my relationship with food was that I would never, ever be a vegetarian. Ever. If I ever met someone I had a crush on who was a vegetarian, it automatically made it easier for me to move on from them (you can’t go out to dinner and say, oh man was that steak ever good and have them completely understand! Basis for any relationship: understanding and sharing experiences!) Whenever someone asked if I was a vegetarian, I would laugh, and say, “No, never” (FOOL! Psh, asking if I’m a vegetarian). It always made me feel really good when a chef I really admired said they hated vegetarians and proclaimed that they would forever eat meat. Like, YES. I am not strange in thinking that confining yourself to just vegetables seems like a sad endeavor.

I thought because I loved food so much and because of who I was, I did not want to restrict myself from any experiences (can we not agree, that many good food experiences involve meat? Deep fried chicken?! Ramen?! Izakayas?! PEKING DUCK?!). I didn’t want to not be able to eat certain things just because of a certain belief that I didn’t really even believe in or understand (clearly). And I thought being a vegetarian would be taking me away from experiences that I would find really meaningful, and not to mention, so delicious. I mean, I am pretty hermetic as it is, and to take away a big chunk of my joy for when I do go out to eat and socialize? Oh gawd.

I knew reading this book that I would be presented with facts that I just would not be able to look away from. I knew that the instant I committed to this book, that, something would change and I would have no choice but to change because I just simply was not ignorant anymore. It made me scared to read it. But I am not (or would like to think, at least when it comes to books)….a wimp. So I read.

At first with the book, I wasn’t really connecting to it. I felt more awful that I didn’t feel awful about what I was reading. The part that I didn’t feel all that awful about was how much animals suffer when we kill them. It was still too distant for me (which is what the book was getting at as well - we just aren’t connected to our food and where it comes from anymore). The facts with these enormous numbers just didn’t disgust me enough. You can think I’m awful. It’s okay. 

But then he started talking about how eating animals affects our environment. I had always known how eating meat completely messes up our planet and that if the world had a less meat heavy diet, the environment would be incredibly thankful. Even though I make fun of them and would avoid them kind of romantically, I was always really thankful that there were vegetarians on this earth, I just couldn’t bring myself to be one. Foer pointed out that if you consider yourself an environmentalist (and even though I have a number of contradictions against me - I do), then the first thing you should be doing is being a vegetarian. I could not argue with him there. A lot of people feel so helpless when it comes to global warming and how to help alleviate its affects, and here is one thing that is so completely in our control and would contribute so drastically, especially on a massive scale, that its just hard to ignore that you should consider being a vegetarian.

Then he started talking about how we have created super diseases from how we produce and eat meat. That terrified me. Because I knew it was something that once unleashed, it would have devastating effects and, well, I sure didn’t want to be caught in a worldwide pandemic and die. I want to die of old age from having a good life, and anything that threatens that and the lives of my future (haha) children, I am way too selfish to let that happen.

He talked about how factory farming has replaced much of family farming in North America. Our diet has killed knowledge that has been built and refined over centuries. That made me incredibly sad. It is completely illogical because we have not replaced the knowledge with something better and we did it out of greed. We are not honoring this slowly dying knowledge, these people, who sustain and create life, but rather take complete advantage of them and completely exploiting it - I was at a loss.

The book isn’t a guilt trip. It just told you very simply and plainly what is happening. And after knowing all these things. I just didn’t feel right about eating meat anymore. He spoke about his grandmother (she is Jewish and went through the holocaust) and how she was surviving on next to nothing during the war, and there was a point where she could have died, but she found a Russian farmer who gave her food, but he only offered pork. And she didn’t take it, even though it would have helped her survive. When asked why, she said, “If nothing matters, then there is nothing to save.” Food matters so much to me, I deeply care about everything that comes with it, and I just cannot knowingly think I have a respectful relationship with it by continuing to eat meat in this point in time. Who knows, maybe there will be a day where we truly produce meat sustainably. But until that point. Well. I am not holding my breath. And I am sure there are points in my life where I will eat meat again, I’ve got a long way to go, and I am human.

I haven’t even not eaten meat for that long. But definitely longer than I ever have. And I am still kind of scared of the prospect of being a vegetarian. But at the same time, as cheesy as it sounds, I’ve just put in a lot more effort into wanting to not eat meat and it has really made things look different in a really good and expansive way. I see food blogs completely differently. Menus completely differently and what I cook differently. Foer also talked about how the world has such an abundance of edible food available, yet we only eat a very small percentage of it. I feel like I am expanding the possibilities of what I could eat and also my abilities as a cook, the complete opposite of what I thought it would be like to be a vegetarian.

I sure gave vegeterians a hard time.

Sorry guys!

2:44 am  •  13 September 2011

BOOKS READ 38: RICHARD YATES BY TAO LIN

The book reminds me heavily of a person. A boy. A friend. A really good friend. Up until kind of recently, my best friend. Someone I met at a really young age and who I developed a large basis of who I am, how I see life and bleh/groan - how I defined love (or, what I thought was love, fyi, I think love and defining and anything that pertains to it is a constant process - learned that…quite recently!). He was that person that I thought was it, that in the end, I wanted to be with for a very long time (ha, what do I know). None of that ever happened and it confused me to no end. It was a constant thing in our friendship where we would have a good time together and the conversation of a romantic relationship would come up and it would end with me being heartbroken, picking up the pieces, and then going through the slow cycle again of becoming good friends, having moments, developing more feelings, and not having them returned. This dragged on for like 7 years. Yuck. And it just ended abruptly, and maybe it could have just faded away or I could have so obviously seen that there was a reason for everything and to have let that fact changed how I viewed our friendship.

I don’t really know where he is or what he’s doing, but I hope he’s well and doing what he wants to do and is happier then when I last saw him.

The writing in this book is stark, the characters talked liked him, thought like him - completely non-sensical/slightly surreal, slightly violent, very distant, and the book had a weird humor (the characters’ names are Haley Joel Osmont and Dakota Fanning - it made the first few pages funny to read, then the novelty kind of wore off). It’s about a couple found in this moment in time. Both the characters were really annoying in their own ways, the guy seemed really selfish - demanding and expecting really unimportant things from his girlfriend (Dakota Fanning) and throwing a really stupid fit if she didn’t meet his expectations. Grow up Haley Joel Osmont. And Dakota Fanning. Yeesh, letting Haley Joel Osmont walk all over her all the time. Come on. Haley Joel Osmont? You can do better Dakota. Totally. 

And you, you can always do better. If that’s what I learned from this book and from that friendship, it’s that. Not just better in terms of finding a better guy or significant other, but also a better way to put things, to see things, to know things.

Totally.

1:02 am  •  15 August 2011

Gotham Books March 2011. Jacket Design by Marten Kastner/Crucial detail. Jacket Photos by Lara Kastner.

BOOKS READ 37: LIFE, ON THE LINE BY GRANT ACHATZ

This was the first book in a long time (years) that I could not stop reading. That kept me up late. That made me want to know so badly what came next. It is so good. The writing is frank, simple, direct, and the the story itself is incredible and filled with the most ironic of ironies that is cathartically, in the end, undone.

The book is a memoir by the famous chef/owner of Alinea in Chicago, Illinoizzze, Grant Achatz. The guy is seriously bad ass, a force. Holy. Worked at some of the biggest and highly regarded restaurants in the world, Charlie Trotters, The French Laundry, and El Bulli. Opened up his own restaurant (Alinea) by the time he was 30, innovated and paved the way for molecular gastronomy (crazy chemical reaction, science technique approach to food) and received the James Beard Award for Best Chef in no time (which is the shit in the food world). AND GUESS WHAT! Somewhere in there, he uh, you know, had cancer, stage IV (stage basically before death), IN HIS MOUTH, so yes, tongue cancer, went through rigorous chemotherapy and radiation that took away his sense of taste and was of course in an incredible amount of pain (like the skin of your tongue and throat shedding everyday kind of pain) and he still went to work almost everyday while undergoing treatment.  And oh, as you can see, he, pshh, beat the cancer and thankfully, later, regained his sense of taste. I call in sick when my throat just gets kind of scratchy and I feel a tiny ache coarsing through my body. As if you can’t already tell, I really admire him.

What was interesting was he was of course able to accomplish all of this (and still kill it to this day) because he was incredibly driven, had a pretty big ego (haha, um, see book cover for reference), super clear vision, and unwavering stubornness. When he achieved all the things he set out to do, he was of course elated, but once the cancer hit, and he worked through it and set that new goal for himself of keeping Alinea at its standard and for him to be the one to do that, he…seemed kind of empty once he beat the cancer. From what I can tell, this emptiness came from putting every bit of your existence into surviving (but in the back of your mind knowing you could very well die) and creating and continuing a legacy, and then finding one day, that, you’re going to live. Even though you did everything you possibly could do to live, to be told all of the sudden that you’re not going to die, you just don’t expect it. And there is this weird transition period of going from living your life expecting to possibly die and knowing how and why to living your life expecting to die from old age. To go from something that extreme, where all the stakes are so high, to having everything become just life again, it all begins to get banal. And I think a large part of that for Achatz was because he didn’t have his sense of taste, but once he did, it connected him back to his core that helped him navigate his life and make it feel meaningful and alive again.

Hold onto the thing that makes you human - that keeps you here - and it will navigate itself and always return you to where you need to be.

1:13 am  •  6 June 2011

Harper Collins 2009. Jacket Design by Archie Ferguson and Christine Van Bree. Bluebird Illustration by Juliette Borda.

BOOKS READ 36: THE HAPPINESS PROJECT BY GRETCHEN RUBIN

I (as much as you possibly could for a blog entry), heavily debated whether or not to write about this book. To share my thoughts on it. To…admit that I read a self help book (although, while I am at it, I’ll admit that I read, and really enjoyed Eat, Pray, Love - what can I say, I like when people find themselves and share this with others!). But can one not argue that reading any book is a form of self help? You read a book to help you get through a day through escape, to help you wind down a day, to get you inspired. 

Also the cover, I cringed when I saw it (illustrations of birds and a generic “young” typeface). I had read about the book on a blog somewhere and the person said it was really good, and I always like to read about happiness and I guess at that particular moment I felt I needed to read about happiness even more so, and went and put a hold at the library for this book.

I was the 53 person in line waiting for this book.

53!

And I can only imagine that there may be 53 more after me. Waiting.

The bookstore I used to work at, one of my first tasks was organizing the massive self-help section. It was at least 6 feet tall and 5 feet wide filled tight with books on self help. People at one point read these books and still do to this day.

This (the massive waiting line for this book and the massive amounts of self help books available) all of course are an indication of something, a general thing that many people have in common and I think don’t really overtly talk about partly because of living in a contemporary, developed society. The “thing”, seems, too indulgent, almost to the point of wrong - being unhappy.

I think about this all the time (and I also, geh, cringe at this), but in high school, I romanticized sadness, unhappiness. “You said I chose sadness, but it never once has chosen me.” I would always kind of purposefully felt sad because I felt like it was a stronger emotion and meant I was really “living”. Of course, you as much as I know how stupid this is and I know even though I thought I was sad at the time, I wasn’t.

I wouldn’t go so far to say that I’ve been feeling a lot of sadness lately, but I have been feeling a fair amount of…unhappiness. Which I think occurs when perceptions inside yourself and realities in front of you start to intersect more and become more present and pervasive in your conscience. It gets harder and harder to be light. And maybe even another 5 years from now I’ll look back on this part of my life and think about it like I think about how I “felt” in high school. “Enjoy your worries you may never have them again.”

Anyways, the book. To me, for the most part, it felt like a lot of the author’s theories on happiness, if I applied them in my life, I feel like I would turn into an even more passive aggressive person. That’s not to say though that she didn’t bring up interesting points and things worth trying. I think what was really nice was that she said that she was coming from a place where she wasn’t particularly severely unhappy, but she wasn’t completely happy either. And she also went on to explain that although who she is and her story may not be interesting (I agree), that people can at least learn something from her experience, that they agree and want to apply her theories, or that they don’t and need to consider something else, and that all of this, it’s just part of your way to happiness which is specific to you and only you and can be shaped and defined how you see fit (which is the most exciting and daunting aspect of the pursuit of happiness).

After reading the book though, I did feel better. It was nice to know that someone felt this way and that other people probably felt this way as well. I read somewhere that Jenny Lewis, she just wanted to write songs that made people feel less lonely (suspend your gag reflexes and carefully consider this). And there’s that Vonnegut quote, “What should young people do with their lives today? Many things, obviously. But the most daring thing is to create stable communities in which the terrible disease of loneliness can be cured.” Unhappiness and loneliness seem to be intertwined, and that pursuit of replacing it with company, comfort, and what have you so that is gone, is worthwhile and not at all indulgent.

That’s another thing this book slightly reaffirmed, the pursuit of happiness is not only noble and worthwhile.

But necessary.

And in a way, that’s what everything in this world is.

2:48 am  •  17 May 2011

Broadway Books 2009. Jacket Design: Elizabeth Rendfleisck, Jacket Photograph: Steven Rothfeld

BOOKS READ 35: THE SWEET LIFE IN PARIS BY DAVID LEBOVITZ

I’m not from where I am living now.

I hail from the equivalent of Texas in Canada. Calgary.

I left Calgary when I was 17 to go to Emily Carr University in Vancouver, BC (where I now am). I knew that I would never be staying in Calgary past high school. I wanted to be in a place where all the bands went to. I wanted to be in a place where you could see and touch the ocean. I wanted to be in a place where it wasn’t so cold all the time. I wanted to be far from Calgary because I didn’t really fit in as much as I knew I could. Looking back on it, I realize I was also incredibly…naive and oblivious to a lot of things that I was able to think, fuck it, and leave and not look back. I can’t do that so easily now. A person told me, that you got to keep moving, otherwise the longer you stay, the harder it will be to leave. All the connections you made, too hard to break. He also said, and he prefaced it with, ‘I think this is kind of nice’ (and I agree with his preface and am thus saying it here), you either move for love or a job.

I’ve always felt the need to keep moving after leaving Calgary. A way to feel like my life was going through significant progressions and phases. I haven’t since yet moved from Vancouver, and to be honest, I don’t know if I will. I have all these places that I’d love to live for a year or so. Go to Mexico and learn how to cook legit Mexican food and convince a cooking school there to let me learn from them and possibly let me teach (haha), and oh yah, learn Spanish. Go to New York to see if I could make it and not cry everyday. Go to Hong Kong and get back to my heritage and connect with family more and be part of a city that is moving so fast and where you feel like anything could happen. And to finally learn Cantonese and not have those dinners with family where I just sit there and smile without anything to say (because usually I have so much I’d like to say). Go to Paris and miraculously learn French even though I use comme si comme sa to describe a whatever situation. Go to LA and see if it’s as awful as everyone says it is, even though for some reason I think it could be really nice.

I don’t know if it’s complacency (most likely) or what, but when I really think about moving, the logistics, what you have to go through, it makes me…ill. It also makes me realize how much I love Vancouver and my life here. It also makes me realize that everything becomes day to day no matter where you are. That is life. And my notions of these places are way too romantic that my expectations would probably never be fulfilled and I’d always feel the need to move, to constantly search for that feeling that I may never be able to find. I also get hesitant because even though the distance between Calgary and Vancouver is relatively small, I feel like I am split into two. Calgary self and Vancouver self. And at times that is nice. I can go back and forth when I need to. But I also have this slight feeling of displacement of never being in sync with the place when I quite want to be. You realize that everything moves on without you and you feel the need to catch up, but you can’t because you just weren’t there.

Enough of that.

The book.

This book is about a man going to Paris to live after his partner died to feel something (I started choking up so hard when I read this one sentence in the book, it’s always so devastating to me to read about someone losing someone they love). The book…is okay. It reads more like a blog (the author is a famous blogger), there are no long story arcs (except for of course, what it is like to live in Paris, but bleh, that doesn’t count cause it’s a given). It’s more just quick anecdotal bits about Parisian life with a recipe at the end of each anecdote (like…a food blog). The author’s love for Paris is genuine and evident and he is probably joking really hard in order to make a point, but he makes Parisians seem like the most superficial, annoying, non-sensical people on earth. But all said, it still made me long for Paris even more.

I’ll be seeing it this summer.

And I am looking forward to it. Flaws and all.

12:55 am  •  21 April 2011

BOOKS TO READ 04

What I Talk About When I Talk About Running by Haruki Murakami
Einstein in Love by Dennis Overbye

Ha um, when do I not buy a Murakami book or a book with ‘love’ in the title. The latter…strictly impulsive buy based on title alone. Impulse, I hope you do not fail thee.

1:33 am  •  18 April 2011

Penguin Modern Classics 2009. Cover Photograph: Françoise Lacroix/Panoptika

BOOKS READ 34: WIDE SARGASSO SEA BY JEAN RHYS

I can tell you right now that I won’t remember this book. I’ll forget next week that I’ve even read it. It’s not bad or anything,  I just felt no connection to it whatsoever and didn’t feel the need to make a connection to it either. And it’s nothing to feel bad about (as you can tell…I clearly don’t). I would say though that is is kind of rare to find books that you truly connect with and that stay with you. It’s like that with everything. Music, films, food, people, loves.  

I kind of knew going into reading this book that I wouldn’t really get much out of it, and the main reason why I started reading it was cause I had recently gotten it and also it was so thin and I knew I would (haha…) feel at least some validation from finishing a book (as you’ve probably noticed, although I have a strictly book blog, I am by no means a prolific reader, and I want to write more on this thing, but it’s all based on how fast I read, which is at times, for me, painfully slow).

I know it’s like…well what was the point then of even reading the book, much less, buying it if you know you weren’t going to really care about it anyways? You know how you go into a bookstore and you let the books carry you, you let them make you think that if you pick them, and if they are read, that you will I dunno, be this certain person that you’d want to be, a more (ahem), well-read version - a better version of yourself.

Regardless, it is also about the pursuit for finding that story that resonates with you and to me, the best way for these stories to be found is through this sort of trial and error, of being guided by these notions, and oh is it ever nice to find that story, but oh is it ever okay if you don’t as well.

12:13 am  •  29 March 2011