I used the last month of 2023 to catch up on reading.
This year I returned to a selection of childhood favorites I first read between the ages of seven and 12. I opted to read with my ears and listen to audio versions.
The books all relate to For One Brilliant Moment We Shine, the novel I’m revising—although I was only semi-aware of the relationship when I began.
First I revisited Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland in the recording by Sir John Gielgud and was transported to my childhood bedroom where I had listened to the same recording over and over on my little portable record player, which looked something like this:
Recalling Alice and her most peculiar adventures prompted me to include a scene in the novel in which the main character walks by the Alice in Wonderland sculpture in New York City’s Central Park.
Next, I returned to C. S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia, listening to The Magician’s Nephew and The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.
Then came Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time, read by Hope Davis.
Finally, just in time for the new year, The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster, delightfully narrated by the talented actor Rainn Wilson (also co-founder of SoulPancake).
What these books have in common—besides the fact that I loved them as a young reader—is their exploration of a world beyond what we see and perceive in our everyday lives.
No wonder my book also traverses this world.
Whether I had a natural inclination toward such travels of the imagination before discovering these books, they fanned the flames of a fire that still smolders in me. They are why my current literary taste runs toward works like Moshin Hamid’s Exit West and Kevin Brockmeier’s The Brief History of the Dead. I, too, want to explore that other world. I want the veil to part.
This is how reading becomes a conversation with our psyches.
We may not recognize the effects of beloved books and authors for decades. When we do, we may feel moved to speak back to them—as writers, in works of our own, or as readers, in how we shape our lives.
Beware the darker side.
At the same time I was revisiting these delightful tales that shaped my current literary leanings, I began reading Jonathan Gottschall’s The Story Paradox, a book that surfaces how stories can divide and rile and—in the wrong hands—be intentionally wielded as weapons. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s TED Talk, The Danger of a Single Story, covers similar risks from what may seem benign and beloved tales.
At their best, stories open more doors and hearts than they close.
I write to bring readers along with me on my particular journey, not to bludgeon them into beliefs or belittle their perspectives. I write to open pathways of connection.
What books or stories have engaged you in ongoing conversation?
Thank you for being one of the 53 percent of adults who read literature of some kind in 2022 and for keeping your mind and heart open to the conversation.
For writers—or anyone who wants to get in touch with their creative spirit
My workshop, Your Big Why: Writing Into Who You Want to Be in 2024, is coming up on January 31 in the Birth Your Truest Story community. It’s one of our low-cost offerings at $19.99. Find out more and register at https://bit.ly/BYTS-YourBigWhy.
Bring a friend!
And join the BYTS community (free) to see all our events.