*trigger warning for eating disorders near the end of post*
When my soon-to-be eight-year-old was born, I decided to read during the times I was nursing him. Looking back, I’m curious why I didn’t choose non-fiction. But I’m glad I didn’t. Instead, I picked up one of the Jane Austen books that sat on our piano. I read more books that year than I had in a long time.
Often I look back at life and realize that decisions I made had greater effects than I would have imagined. That encourages me to take my life seriously (which is not the same as taking myself too seriously). After all, who knows what this small change will spark? But it’s also terrifying. Who knows what will come from these decisions that I’m making almost mindlessly sometimes?
I read a lot. I used to share all my books in Instagram stories but got tired of people’s shock at some of my choices. I tried listing them on the blog but those posts are time-consuming. Moving to Substack and opening a paid subscription has given me a great space to chronicle my monthly reads along with recording them in the back of my planner. Commenting on each book before I send out that email gives me time to reflect on my own reading choices too.
The reflection helps me see themes in the work that I’m drawn to. It allows me to note the diversity of authors (or lack thereof) that I’m reading.1 If I weren’t making the monthly lists, I might not look back over my reading until the end of the year when I compile a “best of” list.
I’m not the first person to discuss the role of reading fiction. I want to read this book by Austin Carty; Scot McKnight walked through it in his substack. This is also on my list. Eugene Peterson dedicated time in his schedule to reading novels. You can google and find great resources on the value of reading good stories.
Right before I sat down to draft this email I finished reading Celebrities for Jesus by Katelyn Beaty. I mentioned at the end of Thursday’s post that I had started it and assumed I was going to fly through it. I was right. It was unsettling, inquisitive, pointed. The final chapter left me contemplative and doubly determined to live a small life.2 I jumped up from my chair, book in hand, to jot down some opposing ideas from the hellish lifestyles and consequences she described. I wrote a short list: obscurity, ordinary faithfulness, proximity, the way up is down.
Good writing can linger no matter the genre. Hopefully someone’s work changes our lives, shows us a different way to see the world, even amuses or distracts us for a time. But if we are going to work with people, understand people, develop deeper compassion for people, there’s nothing like a good story.
The first two books I read this month were novels. The Personal Librarian made me dive deep into how complicated it would be to hide one’s true self in order to do the work one was compelled to do. What world are we making where this is necessary? Why are we doing that? Who around me is compelled to do that and how am I contributing to their pain? How much more good would be in the world if we let everyone contribute?
Next, I read The Girls at 17 Swann Street. Though it’s Yara Zgheib’s first book, I read it after her second book. This one pulled me in, mainly because Zgheib is a fabulous writer. I stayed up too late multiple nights reading it because I was rooting for the main character and needed to find out what happened to her. The story also unveiled a life that I had never attempted to imagine. The main character battles anorexia. Through flashbacks, the reader is forced to watch anorexia take over her life. The reader is forced to reckon with how this disrupts the lives of her family. The reader viscerally feels her pain as she attempts to overcome this eating disorder. All that was within me was cheering for her victory. I will respond differently when I meet someone struggling with an eating disorder because I read this book.3 That’s no small accomplishment for a story.
One of the aims of fiction is that we place ourselves in someone else’s shoes. We understand at a deeper, though not thorough, level what it is like to be someone else, see the world from their position, experience their pain and pleasure. Stories contain nuance, grapple with complexity, resist easy answers and black-and-white thinking. The hope is that it expands the capacity of the reader to empathize with strangers, with people unlike them, with people who have problems they have never experienced. Reading fiction should lead to an expansion of self, where we have existed outside of our own story at least for a bit.
It’s why I’ll never give up fiction. I’m going to spend my life with people and so much of following Jesus means living well in community. Good stories have their place as one of my teachers.
I try to make these observations from a place of curiosity and not judgment, though I do often make changes from the observations.
And I don’t define “small” as being scared of doing anything different or new or risky. I mean “small” to be local and interdependent and ordinary.
Reading is great practice for real life.
I loved reading your thoughts on this! I read The Personal Librarian last year and had many of the same reflections. And I added a few titles to my TBR list from your mentions!
I love this. Fiction has always been my best friend. As an autistic person, reading fiction allowed me to learn about people without the stress of social interactions. It was also my escape from a confusing and overwhelming world. It still is all of these things for me.