The Books That Built Me
The Books That Built Me.
My apartment has four bookcases, each shelf double-stacked. Books piled on nightstands, stacked beside the bathtub, balanced precariously on kitchen counters. I've moved six times in ten years, and the moving companies always comment on the boxes labeled "books" – their quantity, their weight.
"You could just get a Kindle," they suggest, hefting another box.
But physical books hold memories that digital text cannot. The coffee stain on page 47 of my copy of Bolaño's "2666" from that rainy afternoon in a café when a stranger's elbow jostled my table. The train ticket from Milan to Venice tucked into Calvino's "Invisible Cities" – a perfect accidental bookmark. The margins of my undergraduate copy of de Beauvoir's "The Second Sex" filled with my evolving thoughts over years of rereading.
Books have shaped me more profoundly than perhaps any other influence in my life. They were my first experience of intimacy with other minds – the sensation of another's thoughts inhabiting my consciousness, changing how I understand myself and the world.
My childhood favorites revealed early patterns that now seem obvious in retrospect. I devoured detective novels – not for the mysteries themselves but for the detectives' ability to read people, to notice what others overlooked, to understand motivations buried beneath surface behaviors. This fascination with human psychology and unspoken cues has served me well throughout my life.
Political theory came later, during university years. I still return to Hannah Arendt's explorations of power and connection, to Foucault's insights on how desire operates within social structures. These frameworks helped me understand dynamics I was experiencing but couldn't yet articulate – how differently power functions in various relationships, how vulnerability creates space for genuine connection.
Contemporary fiction sustains me now. Ferrante's raw examinations of female friendship. Murakami's blend of mundane reality with profound strangeness. Smith's precise observations of human contradiction. These writers capture something essential about how we hide from and reveal ourselves to each other – sometimes in the same gesture.
Recently, I've been exploring neuroscience – fascinating research on how physical touch affects brain chemistry, how eye contact activates specific neural pathways, how presence or absence of genuine connection impacts our physical health. Johann Hari's "Lost Connections" particularly resonated with its exploration of how modern life has fractured our sense of belonging. The science confirms what experience has taught me – that meaningful human contact is not a luxury but a biological necessity.
Books remind me that my experiences, while uniquely my own, tap into universal human patterns that have existed throughout history. Nothing we feel is entirely new – which I find profoundly comforting. The particular circumstances of our lives may differ, but the essential human needs for understanding, connection, and meaning remain constant across time and culture.
I'm curious – what books have shaped your understanding of connection? Which writers have given you language for experiences that previously felt inexpressible? Our libraries reveal so much about the inner landscapes we inhabit.
Until next time,
Alessandra