They say books transport you to another world. Although, in an age where visual stimuli loom over our every move and follow our senses like a shadow, it’s harder and harder to reach for that book on your bedside table and let it whisk you away.
I can’t count the number of times I’ve put down a good book, distracted by an incoming text or a sudden impulse to scroll through Instagram, never to return to the very words that only seconds ago made an imprint on my mind.
But then, there are the books I come back to over and over again – books that pick me up when I’m down, inspire me when I’m lost, and provide more satisfaction than any amount of Facebook, Instagram, Whatsapp, and Youtube combined. Through simple rhythms of alphabets on a page, these books move, provoke, and transform the reader into a better person, and here they are, in no particular order…
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When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi
“Will having a newborn distract from the time we have together?” she asked. “Don’t you think saying goodbye to your child will make your death more painful?”
“Wouldn’t it be great if it did?” I said.
What happens when a doctor and lover of literature attempts to come to terms with his own mortality? While he operated on dozens of patients by day and battled his own cancer diagnosis by night, Dr. Kalanithi blazed with life and spirit. For me, his reflections on the struggle to choose, as a young student, between medicine and literature hit all too close to home, but it was the way his words presented a man who was truly alive with passion that taught me the biggest lesson…because what the world needs is more people who have come alive.
My Childhood, In the World, My Universities by Maxim Gorky
“Keep reading books, but remember that a book’s only a book, and you should learn to think for yourself.”
This is the powerhouse novel that changed my life. Gorky was a Marxist trying to convey proletarian ideas through his writing, but he was also a perspective observer who wrote about the human condition and man’s search for meaning more tenderly than anything I had ever read. A must read, even if only for its gorgeous descriptions of the Russian countryside.
Running in the Family by Michael Ondaatje
“We own the country we grow up in, or we are aliens and invaders.”
A Canadian writer revisits the country of his birth in the midst of monsoon season – one that was never his to begin with. As he recollects the convoluted pieces of family history – an entanglement of Dutch and Portuguese colonial descents with Tamil and Singhalese blood running through their veins – it is the intoxicating descriptions of a bygone Sri Lanka that leaves you with whiffs of cardamom and coconut as you flip through its pages. 🙂
The Power of One by Bryce Courtenay
“Pride is holding your head up high when everyone around you has theirs bowed. Courage is what makes you do it.”
The classic coming of age story can sometimes be tacky – weak kid overcomes bullies to find himself and reaches for the stars, but Bryce Courtenay writes with so much fearless conviction about an English kid in an 1940s South Africa torn apart by racism and Apartheid that it makes you forget any traces of a stereotype.
A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki
“Sometimes when she told stories about the past her eyes would get teary from all the memories she had, but they weren’t tears. She wasn’t crying. They were just the memories, leaking out.”
In Tokyo, a fifteen year old girl struggles with her identity and a depression-ravaged father. On Vancouver island, a Canadian writer finds the girl’s diary, written years ago, floating from the vast Pacific Ocean. Ruth Ozeki manages to address life’s most complex concepts – escape, dissatisfaction, time, and human connection – through prose as simple and clarifying as a cup of green tea, no melodrama, no cliffhangers and emotional outbursts, just cockles of wisdom hidden in thoughtful, understated passages.
Speak, Memory by Vladimir Nabokov
“The nostalgia I have been cherishing all these years is a hypertrophied sense of lost childhood, not sorrow for lost banknotes.”
Childhood occupies a special part of our minds where innocence, beauty, love, and wonder collide in an impressionist painting of hope and vivid memories. It’s ironic that a Russian writer should be considered among the greatest creators of English prose in all of history, but Nabokov undoubtedly deserves every ounce of his reputation. His memoirs of an lost childhood in a Russia of the past, one that existed before the Soviets, will blow you away with its raw emotion and sheer beauty. Its passages have stayed me with long since first coming across them as a seventeen year old in World Literature class, and in many ways, shaped how I write.
Dreams from My Father by Barack Obama
“Even as that spell was broken and the worlds that they thought they’d left behind reclaimed each of them, I occupied the place where their dreams had been.”
By now, you probably realised I have a penchant for memoirs, and Barack Obama – questionable politician, true idealist, master wordsmith – stands among giants in this field. Politics aside, this was one of the best memoirs I had ever read.
Musings of a Leaf 
Cool