This collection brings together sixty of the top read books from the 1900s through the 2010s.
Each author offers us a reason to keep reading 📖 a wild imagination, an unfamiliar experience, a nagging question that sticks with you long after you put the book down.
Then there is the practical question of why I keep buying more books. My comic supplies that explanation
Which classics have you read? Did any one of them change how you think or engage with the world?
Answering my own question:
I read Kafka’s The Metamorphosis when I was fourteen. I felt such empathy for Gregor, particularly the way his family rejected him after he became an insect, that I was devastated. His story changed how I understood our judgments of others and how those judgments shape the way we treat them.
Around that time, I watched my brother torment ants under a microscope. I tried it once myself and felt my heart collapse into my stomach. I stopped him. What I had felt for Gregor became immediate and physical, and these experiences led me to write my first philosophy paper. It was later published and led to my mentorship with a renowned geneticist.
In that paper, I wrote that we see in others what we first see in ourselves, and that our opinions of others do not determine who they are. They represent us at a particular stage of growth. I have spent my life returning to those principles, examining my own judgments and making space for grace. Kafka changed my life because my empathy for Gregor became the beginning of my philosophical inquiry, shaping how I understood human judgment and treated other living beings.
😅… I was a serious thinker about the world until one day existence itself felt pretty funny for me. Funny-haha, funny-peculiar, funny you’ve got to be kidding me, funny didn’t anybody see that? Funny whatever the heck is going on, surely I'm not in charge.
Other teenagers read Kafka and became existentialists. The only thing I can say is that booksellers love me. I’ve never stopped reading since that fateful summer.
And of course at fourteen, I naturally responded to devastation by submitting a paper. My life was tennis, friends, and school. My friends side-eyed for reading a book with a bug in the cover 🐛 no one cared what I was reading on the tennis court, except for The Inner Game of Tennis 🎾 that book was gospel. The GATE teacher we visited once a week loved it so much she got it published and sent around, where it did end up in the hands of a mentor who introduced me to the idea of engineered genetics. 🧬 Influences are real. I’ve been designing and building systems ever since. This whole blog is built using engineering principles. See the About page for more on that.
Btw, there wasn’t even a paper due that day. I had to ask for it to be considered as extra credit.
But in all this kooky complexity that is life, I learned to make space for grace. The books ended up taking additional square meters. But that’s okay. Sprinkle in cozy leather sofas 🛋️ art 🖼️ and oodles of coffee ☕️ and it’s a whole naturally lit vibe.
Some books help you change the way you see the world. Others convince you to watch DIY videos on YouTube, then go to Home Depot to buy a bucket worth of reinforcements to attach your shelves to the walls so they might withstand a seismic event.
We see in others what we first see in ourselves. Apparently, I saw someone who needed more rooms and a subterranean archive to house my book collection. “I read a book about that” is my signature catchphrase.
One book changed my life. I’m still reading in case the next one explains what to do with it. Until then, I’m still blogging ✍️
And yes, I catch and release insects back into the wild. It’s horribly inconvenient but alas… they are living creatures 🐜
