Books & Audiobooks
Books provide an incredible way of learning about the world, but also the people who recommend them to you. I think of them as a gateway to empathy. It’s one of the reasons why my 2025 reading challenge focuses on reading the world through someone else’s eyes.
My goal is more qualitative in that if my coworkers recommend it, I will read it, regardless of whether or not a book I would normally read. The challenge here is that most of what people have thus far recommended is fiction. It’s outside my reading norm but that’s what makes the challenge so interesting. I take more time to read fiction because I want to get to know the characters, plot, and writing style in intimate detail. I don’t just deepen my understanding of those who recommend books to me, but in my relation to the world around me as well. Non-fiction can be relational as well, but I find that fiction does this moreso, and I anticipate that it will lead me into deeper questions about the world and those around me. I can’t wait!
There’s no total number of books I’m hoping to read, but I want to read at least 200-250 books (if someone were to ask how many books I want to read), compared to 377 in 2024.
So, what do I hope to learn by taking this challenge up?
- A little more about what so many people enjoy about reading fiction.
- How to cultivate a mind that is patient enough to appreciate fiction.
- To test some of my own assumptions as a reader when I imagine the worlds that authors create (as in, when I read a character do I make assumptions about their race, socioeconomic background if it isn’t talked about, or other identities). Non-fiction tends to be more de facto than fiction so I want to better understand any ways of seeing that I may be unaware of.
- And of course, more about my coworkers!
Some of the titles recommended thus far include:
- Stolen Life: The Journey of a Cree Woman by Rudy Wiebe
- The Death of Vivek Oji by Akwaeke Emezi
- Starter Villain by John Scalzi
- It Was Me All Along: A Memoir by Andie Mitchell
- Ducks: Two Years in The Oil Sands by Kate Beaton
Follow along as I write and share reviews for some of them, including a few unique questions that I plan on asking myself (and my coworkers) about why they loved their chosen books so much.