“I seemed to see that this life that we live in half-darkness can be illumined, this life that at every moment we distort can be restored to its true pristine shape, that a life, in short, can be realised within the confines of a book!”
— Marcel Proust
As winter approaches and the days shorten and the light thins and the frigid air presses against the windows, it’s a good time to slow down and catch up on some good quality reading.
'Tis the season when the sense of urgency recedes, or at least should, and the inner life comes alive. Good books help with this. They demand attention and contemplation, two things the modern world is doing its best to snuff out. Daily.
“It is a most wonderful comfort to sit alone beneath a lamp, book spread before you, and commune with someone from the past whom you have never met.”
—Yoshida Kenko
Winter time alleviates the tyranny of hustle. It naturally invites introspection. The quietness, the stillness, the long contemplative evenings under lamplight, that’s where it’s at. Books nourish introspection and stir the imagination. Books, more than anything, help us examine our lives with greater subtlety and depth.
As Susan Sontag once reminded us:
”Books are not only the arbitrary sum of our dreams, and our memory. They also give us the model of self-transcendence. Some people think of reading only as a kind of escape: an escape from the “real” everyday world to an imaginary world, the world of books. Books are much more. They are a way of being fully human.”
Anyway, I’d like to share eight fascinating nonfiction books that I’ve read recently. I hope you enjoy it and take the time to read a few. Let’s get to it.