Notes From A Life Spent Reading

I don’t remember the first book I ever read, but I remember the first one that made me feel something so deeply I couldn’t shake it off. It was Charlotte’s Web by E. B. White. I was maybe eight years old, sitting on the floor of my childhood bedroom with a paperback that smelled faintly of dust and school glue. When Charlotte died, I cried—not just for her, but for the beauty of friendship, sacrifice, and seasons that never return. That book cracked something open in me. It made me realize that stories don’t just entertain—they stay.

As I grew older, books became mirrors and windows. I remember reading The Catcher in the Rye in high school and feeling like Holden Caulfield and I were pacing in step—both confused, both angry at things we didn’t understand, both aching to hold onto something real. Later, Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston showed me the power of voice—how a woman can reclaim her own narrative with grace and thunder. That novel didn’t just change the way I read; it changed the way I listened.

There were years I turned to books like lifelines. During a rough patch in my twenties, when everything felt unsteady, Tiny Beautiful Things by Cheryl Strayed sat on my nightstand like a quiet friend. I would open it at random, and each page felt like a warm glow—gentle, honest, sometimes devastating, but always human. It reminded me that being lost was okay, as long as I kept moving.

And then came The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt. I read it slowly, letting the language soak into me. That book taught me that beauty and tragedy are often twins, and that carrying both is part of being alive.

I’ve come to think of reading as a ritual, a sacred one. I don’t read to escape anymore—I read to return. To myself, to the parts I forget when the world gets noisy. These days, I find myself rereading The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion when grief brushes too close, or Pride and Prejudice when I need a reminder that wit and kindness can coexist.

Each book is like a landmark in the map of who I’ve been, who I’m becoming.