Books Are The Mirrors Of The Soul
Holly Coffell
Do author projects: Read several books by the same author. The first book I finished this year was by Jhumpa Lahiri, and I have two others of hers on my TBR (Translating Myself and Others and Interpreter of Maladies). I suppose you can say this is my author project.
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I have been thinking a lot about the way I read lately. Since I signed up for Goodreads in 2011, I\u2019ve set a reading goal at the beginning of each year. And every year as I met my goal, the next year\u2019s rose and rose until, last year, I had a goal of 52 books and read 58. This felt good, of course. This felt like I won.
So I made a change this year: I lowered my Goodreads reading goal. It was a strangely difficult decision to make, deciding to break out of my year-over-year increase. But I did it and, already, I have noticed a positive change in my reading behavior. I\u2019ve been happy about this change \u2014 until I detected a flaw in my goal.
In my essay about reducing reading goals, I said I intended not to surpass my goal. Now, a month after writing that declaration, I realize how stifling the whole thing is. What \u2014 I plan to read 45 books but no fewer, lest I don\u2019t meet my goal, and no more, lest I negate my desire to read deeper this year? The idea of having to read1 a specific number number of books makes me feel claustrophobic. How unnatural; how restrictive.
All around the internet, I\u2019ve seen people share their interesting reading goals. I love how so many readers seem to have the same idea: to be more intentional this year; to not read anything and everything that pops up on their radar. To simply mix up their reading habits.
is doing a rereading project: each month, she is rereading an old beloved book. She says, \u201Ctaking a step back from my preferred genres leaves me feeling refreshed and inspired.\u201D I love this notion of rereading a book a month. I have so many books I want to reread \u2014 including \u2019s Before and After the Book Deal and, always, one of the many Elena Ferrante books on my shelves. Rereading is a way to revisit the books that made us fall in love with reading in the first place.
This list is not for me, but I do appreciate how she\u2019s focusing on LGBTQ+, indigenous, female, and black writers. I personally couldn\u2019t spend an entire month only reading books with green covers, or short story collections. I\u2019m a vibes reader \u2014 I pick up a book based on my mood, and I also have several books going at once. Still, I like how she\u2019s broken the year down by month. I\u2019m sure she\u2019ll have some interesting things to say about her year of reading.
plans to listen to more audiobooks and do more puzzles or adult coloring books or cross stitch. Over at , the comment section is flooded with brilliant 2024 reading aspirations. says she is practicing a threshold reading goal. \u201CWe can get all caught up on the numbers and not appreciate what we read as much if we are trying to race to the next book.\u201D
This is how I should have originally phrased my 2024 reading goal: practicing a reading threshold, not aiming to read one specific number. Not surpassing my goal is important to me for reasons I\u2019ve said before2, but I hadn\u2019t thought to word it like this.
In writing this post, I\u2019ve figured out how to amend my own reading goal. I aim to read between 40 and 45 books this year. I am going to do some more rereading than usual, but may not commit to 12 like the reread challenge. And I am going to read more books from my shelves that I haven\u2019t read yet. This feels right.
Virginia Woolf said that books are the mirrors of the soul. If that\u2019s the case, I want to be nourishing my soul with the right books, and I know all this time I\u2019ve spent thinking and writing about reading goals is bringing me closer to those books.
What I\u2019m reading: Tom Lake by Ann Patchett (buzzy, but I think I can see why) and The Quickening by Elizabeth Rush (stunning). I\u2019ve also started reading my second book in Italian this year (I\u2019m telling you \u2014 reducing my reading goal is the ONLY reason I\u2019ve felt free to do this): Harry Potter e la Pietra Filosofale. I manage only about five pages a day, but I am really enjoying it.
I want to read more books like A Little Life, which is 832 pages. I want to read more books in Italian. Both of these take an incredible amount of time, and in the past, I\u2019ve often opted for books in the 300-page range so as to not feel behind on my goal. Again, I am highly motivated by reading goals. Am I too beholden to them? Maybe. But that\u2019s for another post.
Generally, if you are a keen reader not just for entertainment but out of following your sheer curiosity, the key to you may dwell in your library. Recent research by psychologists concluded that your story choice tells a story about you, wrote Wendy L. Patrick, JD, Ph.D. in Psychology Today.
Just scan the titles and connect with what they call out from your inner self. You might be surprised that the books you read point like a therapist to your real desires, unfulfilled dreams, life philosophy and overall connection with the intellect, the spirit and the world. I asked a few friends what book/s have changed their life and got quite fascinating, rapid replies. My question was inspired by the board pictured bellow at a Los Angeles book festival.
The books you read were either chosen by you, for you or forced upon you. Which ones do you finish the fastest? What ideas do you memorise for longer? It get even more complicated, what I read for pleasure differs from what I gulp out of sheer intellectual curiosity. Free will is still involved anyway in the choice making and the pursuit of the text until its end.
A book lent from a public library still can have a greater impact on your life than owned copies piled in your closet. Impact and reading is about the process, and maybe that inner necessity to underline, to highlight what touches you, what you want to memorise, sometimes scribed over in personal notebooks.
Therefore, audio books are not for me. I listen to them occasionally, while taking a bath and just want to soak without scribbling, while driving or commuting, but still, during these necessary activities I prefer to unwind with music. To cancel the noise of the urban life, rather than filling my mind with more chatter.
Ponder, why you picked this book for this journey or the destination you are carrying it along? The reason why you travel somewhere might be that book or whatever you are longing to escape. An emotion, the past, some life situation you are not ready or do not want to face?
Reading is not just escapism, entering the fictive story, but for me it musts be connected with the reality even if just through a feathery touch, with the productive not just seductive desires, conscious emotions and experiences of not only of the author, but also of the reader.
Peak at your bedside table or your kindle library, scan the titles and reflect upon the content of these books. Take a free day or a Sunday afternoon to graze on these hand-picked snippets of yourself. More than a curated cv, these stacks of printed papers may whisper important insights about what you seek in life. Your mind is savvy, subconsciously the brain signalled you what book to choose.
On the tactile side of reality we live through our actions, and not just in our imagination. We learn about ourselves the most profound lessons only when aware of our actions and mindful about our reactions.
Adventurers tend to be impatient, and I am too sometimes. Practicing calligraphy as much as meditation, yin yoga, ikebana, pottery or other crafts requiring your full attention, pulls the muscles of my patience into their stronger core, and so does reading.
If you are curious to discover more, check my next post in which I reveal a bit of myself through the books that enriched me, either changed my perception, view of life, or challenged my preconceived ideas.
As much as the library at your home, your personal journal is the gateway to your true, perhaps outwardly masked self. Rereading your thoughts illuminates the deep scars in the soul, highlights your strengths and weaknesses to learn from.
The Forty Rules of Love is a multi-layered novel. An American housewife is charged with editing a novel about the mystic Rumi and it changes her life. Rumi was a gifted Islamic preacher and teacher who, in the book, developed into RUMI the Sufi poet after he met his soul-mirror named Shams of Tabriz.
Like Ella the female protagonist in the novel, YeYeIfe was an American housewife who after raising her children discovered her husband was not her soul mate. They divorced. I met her when we both became students at the Immaculate Heart College Center.
She was a kind of exotic bird: a white woman wearing a leopard print skirt, armloads of African bracelets and high heeled mules. Shortly after meeting her, YeYeIfe became an initiate of an African spiritual practice and had to cleanse herself of her previous life. I was shocked when, wrapped in a white smock, she cut off her hair and swore off cosmetics for one year.
A Google search found her referenced in a book. I contacted the author. He said after he interviewed her several years ago, she moved to South America. I imagine her like the itinerant Shams trading healing stories for food and teaching those who are called to dance.
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