Books

Reading

Books were my university, my best friend, and my saviors time and again. There’s fiction too — the novels that shaped me are their own list, for another day.

Each of these grew my brain and made the world bigger than I’d understood it to be. Several of these writers turn up elsewhere on this page — some on podcasts I recommend, some writing newsletters of their own.

These days I listen as often as I read. On the treadmill, in the kitchen, at three in the morning when sleep won’t come. Neuroscientists at Berkeley mapped what happens in the brain during both, and found that whether the words come through your eyes or your ears, your brain builds meaning in almost exactly the same places. So I’ve stopped treating it as the lesser option — especially when the author narrates.