From Light Reads to Literary Fiction

An update on my reading plan for the remainder of the summer, some books and authors who’ve influenced me, and other random thoughts. | If you’re interested: https://www.goodreads.com/

Before I dive into what I’ll be reading over the next couple months, I wanted to let everyone know that if you’re looking for the ideal (free) tool to help you keep track of all the books you’ve read and want to read, Goodreads is the place to be. It is my absolute favorite app. In fact, most of the books I’ll be sharing about in this post I originally found out about through Goodreads. So if you feel compelled to do so, click the link attached in the ridiculously long subtitle above and create your own account.

One of the biggest things that I love about summer is getting the time to explore different genres, read all the books that have been on your list forever, and the ones that you’ve just discovered. That’s what is really great about working at the library, is practically every day I find an interesting book as I’m shelving. I’ll either make a mental note of it, or I’ll write it down on a notepad I’ve started keeping on my cart recently. And trust me, it’s internally humiliating to forget the title of a book that you’re just dying to read. Moral of the story, if you want to expand your reading list—apply for a job at the local library.

The beautiful thing about literature is that it’s a deeply personal form of expression that can be customized to each and every aspect of your personality. A prominent part of my personality is the influence I take from learning about great writers and poets, and how their insight and perspective tend to influence my work. A few months ago I read a collection of essays by Elena Ferrante, In the Margins: On the Pleasures of Reading and Writing.

“My passion for realism… at a certain point became a statement of incapacity. The need to anchor myself in reality was indisputably strong.” This quote from her essay really resonated with me, because this is exactly my approach to writing. I’ve tried to write fiction, but there’s something so meaningful about taking all your candid thoughts and experiences and just giving that to the page without pulling all of it into a fictional story that is separate from your reality.

Despite my affinity towards writing nonfiction, I will always draw great inspiration from reading fiction. I can’t express in words my love and appreciation for the works of Tolstoy, Salinger, and Jane Austen, because they take their realities and turn them into these beautiful stories with lovely detail that just sit with you eternally. Please go read Anna Karenina, and you will see exactly the depth that I’m talking about, and that I could probably continue talking about for the rest of this Substack post… In a nutshell, reading beautiful fiction resonates with and inspires me more so than reading nonfiction ever will, but I have a journalistic inclination to write about true events and experiences, whether those are my own, or others.

One of the many books I’ve come across while shelving at the library, is Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress, by Dai Sijie.