Letter 70: Reading, A Lifetime Love Affair
When we fall in love with reading again
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Just like Emily Fleming describes below, I really don’t remember life before books. They are one of the great loves of my life. My love for literature (and I use that term pretty loosely, as I read the Goosebumps and Babysitters Club series voraciously) has stuck with me from my youth, influenced my studies in college and graduate school, and directed my career as an educator.
I love this Nora Ephron quote, “Reading is escape, and the opposite of escape; it's a way to make contact with reality after a day of making things up, and it's a way of making contact with someone else's imagination after a day that's all too real.”
Where would I be without books? In adulthood, in parenthood, my reading life looks different, of course, but reading (listening to or experiencing on audio) is still so important to me. Through each book, I learn, grow, and experience something beyond myself.
What are you reading and enjoying lately? We would love to hear! —Emily Smith
Announcing a brand new feature for our weekly letters: an AUDIO version of the newsletter, read by the author! If you’d prefer to listen to the day’s newsletter, click play in the embedded link at the top of the letter.
Click play to hear Emily Fleming read today’s letter.
“Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read. One does not love breathing.” ― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird
I don’t remember learning how to read. Maybe no one does? In my memory, it has always been something I have been able to do. The story my mom tells is of her dear friend taking me to the library, telling my mom afterward that I had been reading a book aloud to her. Incredulous, my mom was certain the book was one we had read dozens of times, and surely I was reciting it from memory. But no: the book was new to us, and I could indeed read it. Somewhere along the way, I must have picked it up.
Reading served me well over the years. As natural to me as breathing, I found myself opening a book and being transported to the Little House on the Prairie, or to a meeting of the Babysitters Club, or onto Ramona Quimby’s street. Eventually, reading—along with a few other skills—got me into medical school.
As a byproduct of countless hours of studying, reading became a chore. It was a means to an end, rather than an enjoyable hobby. For years, the conversation with my family went the same way: “Oh! Have you read [insert New York Times bestselling title here]?!” My answer was always the same: No. Thus ended the conversation.
Frankly, I was not a whole lot of fun to talk to for many years. I was living under a medical school-shaped rock. I remember being thrilled Obama had won the presidential election in 2008, but all of the other major events of 2007-2011 (of which there were…quite a few) did not register for me. The things I was reading about all had an “-ology” at the end: Pathology, Physiology, Histology, etc. And no one wanted to hear about whatever completely horrifying or horribly disgusting thing I was learning that week.
This trend continued through residency and into the following years when I was studying for and sitting for my board certification exams. In April 2015, after four years of undergraduate school, four years of medical school, three years of residency, and nearly a year of board exam prep, I finally took my last test. By this time, I had a 10-month-old baby and a full-time job. Sleep took precedence over reading every time.
But around that same time, I learned I had been selected for a deployment to Afghanistan. While I hated the idea of leaving my family, I knew all that solitude would finally afford me the opportunity to do something I hadn’t done in a really long time: read for fun.
Rather than packing many pounds of paperbacks into my standard issue duffel, I was introduced to the Libby app (back then it was called Overdrive). Downloaded onto my iPad mini, this app allowed me to use my library card to check out as many ebooks as my heart desired. I lost count of how many books I read during the six months I was gone, but it was somewhere in the 40-50 neighborhood. All genres, too: self-help, novels, poetry, philosophy, classics. I finally caught up on all the bestsellers everyone had been talking about for the past decade. It was like showing up to a party several years late.
Reading became a part of my routine. Most mornings, when I wasn’t out on a mission, I woke up in my shared dorm room at Bagram Air Base and used my electric kettle and french press to make coffee. Then I eased into the morning, coffee and iPad in hand. I kept a notebook where I would scribble down lines that meant something to me, and it brings me a lot of joy to look back through it now. The whole ritual gave me a sense of normalcy in an otherwise highly abnormal setting. I remember those mornings with a lot of fondness.
After I returned home, the habit stuck. The trick for me is not being too precious about it. Sure it can be fun to conduct a pseudo-intellectual conversation about some obscure philosophical volume you’re poring over, but it is just as fun to tear through three or four fluffy novels in a week. I like having one book I’m reading, for when I have the time to actually sit down, and one that I’m listening to, so I can keep getting through them even if I’m occupied with busy work. I read every night before going to sleep; it settles my mind much more effectively than a mindless social media scroll.
At the beginning of 2022, I set myself a goal of reading 30 books this year. This was the first time I had ever done this, and it’s been a fun little competition to have with myself. This will come as a surprise to exactly zero people who know me personally, but I am currently six books ahead of schedule.
After years spent missing out on connecting through a mutual current read, it has been such a unifying experience to rejoin the reading world. I share an instant connection with someone reading the same thing I am currently reading, and we immediately have something to talk about, even if we have nothing else in common. I also love how reading connects you with the author, introducing you to stories about the experiences of others, some different from your own, and some touchingly similar. I imagine myself becoming friends with some of the authors whose books I have enjoyed, and it makes the world feel homier somehow.
What are you reading right now?
I finally got my library loan for Carrie Soto is Back and I’m slowly savoring it. I’m also listening to Olive Kitteridge.
Emily’s Five Favorite Reads
Here is a selection of some of my favorites, along with a quote from the book to give you a snippet of why I’m in love.
The River Why by David James Duncan
The very first page of this book had me falling in love with the author’s use of language. He constructs a sentence in a way that feels completely fresh and absolutely ingenious. So much so, that this book about fly fishing (which is something I only recently did for the first time) has been one of my favorite books since 2004.
“And so I learned what solitude really was. It was raw material—awesome, malleable, older than men or worlds or water. And it was merciless—for it let a man become precisely what he alone made of himself.”
Man’s Search for Meaning by Victor Frankl
There is absolutely no way for a person to come away from this book unchanged. Dr. Frankl is a Psychiatrist, writing about his experience living in a Nazi concentration camp during World War II. His words have provided a useful framework as I have processed loss and separation in my life. What an incredible man he is.
“But there was no need to be ashamed of tears, for tears bore witness that a man had the greatest of courage, the courage to suffer.”
Malibu Rising by Taylor Jenkins Reed
Having read many of Taylor Jenkins Reed’s books, I have to say this is my favorite. I missed the characters long after finishing the last page.
“Our family histories are simply stories. They are myths we create about the people who came before us, in order to make sense of ourselves.”
The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah
Stories about World War II always enthrall me. The human spirit can be so indomitable, and that time in human history is truly representative of that fact. I loved this story, through and through.
“He loves a version of me that is incomplete. I always thought it was what I wanted: to be loved and admired. Now I think perhaps I’d like to be known.”
The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion
I have always appreciated Joan for putting words to a concept I couldn’t: “I don’t know what I think until I write it down.” This book is a raw memoir about grief, written just after the author lost her husband, while her daughter was also very ill. I appreciated her somewhat detached observations, which resonated deeply with me.
“As I recall this I realize how open we are to the persistent message that we can avert death. And to its punitive correlative, the message that if death catches us, we have only ourselves to blame.”
With gratitude,
Emily Fleming
P.S. Great books, more great books, and reading with our children.