Reading

For most of high school, I didn't bother to read much more than was assigned to me. I didn't have the time or the motivation to sustain such a noble hobby. More to the point, I was lazy.

This year, I've decided to turn a new leaf and never regretted it since. My pleasure reading has ranged from Manifesta to Lizard to Blink. In my book-bound forays, I've noticed a few things:

1. Nonfiction isn't the evil, boring genre I imagined it was as a small child at the public library. I literally avoided those shelves like the plague, fearing such horrors as being educated outside of the classroom.
2. I really like Asian literature. When I picked up Banana Yoshimoto, I had no idea what to expect. A friend had lent me her copy of Lizard and I had promised to read it. I was blown away by the language, shocked to discover it was merely a translation of a text originally written in Japanese. A student of Latin, I am incredibly distrustful of translations and can only imagine how beautiful the text is in it's original language.
3. Reading is a way more productive way to waste time than whatever I used to do.
4. I sound so much smarter when I can interrupt someone to say "That reminds me of a book I just read . . . "

But more importantly, I've come to think of reading as sifting through pages for a nugget of wisdom. Every book has some unique idea, some clever phrasing, some interesting action to shape the way I interpret my own world.
The most interesting thing about literature is the layering of perspective. I'm interpreting the author who in turn is interpreting how I'm going to interpret them. I hear a story from the perspective of a narrator who may or may not be omnipotent but in either case is very selective of the details it chooses to impart.
I take a very post-modern view of the world. For me, the ultimate radical act of life is to actively pursue change. It's so easy to let the world change around you without changing yourself. But that in and of itself, impedes change. And without change, there'd be nothing to differentiate the future from the present.