The unexpected red envelope fell through the pile of marketing postcards and mail. It was from a friend I hadn’t seen, let alone heard from for several years. Although it was masked as a Christmas card, inside the festive exterior was a folded up piece of paper.
It was absolutely delightful to read.
It’s been 12 years since I received a real letter from someone. She was describing some of the things going on in her life, a few thoughts. Even though it was clearly sent to multiple people, it still felt personal—and she invited us (me) to write her back in this very analog, slow way.
This friend is a voracious reader—I couldn’t catch up with the amount of books she’s read in five lifetimes. Among the books she read this year was How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy, by Jenny Odell (which is now on my to-read list). Inspired, she deleted her social media accounts and has committed to connecting in more “real” ways.
It’s an incredible action and while my point isn’t to encourage you to do the same, this commitment demonstrates how powerful reading can be. Has there been a book that has immediately changed your behavior? It’s a beautiful thing to think that something a human created could impact another human, especially without either knowing the other.
In step with my friend’s lead, here are the most impactful books I’ve read this year, having to do with our CYBORG_ themes of systems, technology, and humanity.
Maniac Magee, by Jerry Spinelli
This book was formative to my fifth-grade self, and I decided to revisit it after 20 years. Re-reading the book that convinced me to remain interested in knot tying (and untying) and to heavily invest in my coordination and balance was delightful.
The themes of racism, abuse, and poverty took me by surprise. They were the aspects that I either didn’t grasp as an 11-year-old or simply faded from memory aided by my own privileges.
Despite being a youth book, I found it an important reminder to approach the world and the systems we encounter with curiosity, just like the main character did. Curiosity and grace, that is. Maniac Magee often allows people to be themselves, even if they are unpleasant or downright cruel.
I think it's a kind of grace to be able to meet people where they really are and allow the same acceptance to yourself. Maniac doesn't have an agenda—he's just looking for connection. His proximity to a diverse array of people changes him and changes them over time.
An Immense World, by Ed Yong
A rich, dense, can’t-put-it-down introduction to the worlds of senses that are all around us. It’s the most fun I’ve ever had learning constant facts about how other animals or insects perceive their world (their umwelt). An umwelt is a term used to describe the reality that a creature inhabits based on its sensory perception. Instead of only looking at an animal’s environment, it includes how that animal understands and perceives it.
“Our umwelt is still limited, it just doesn’t feel that way. To us, it feels all-encompassing. It is all that we know, and so we easily mistake it for all there is to know. This is an illusion—and one that every animal shares.” —Introduction
I scrambled to take notes and grab quotes as I listened to this book. If you’re looking to expand your world, this will make universes out of the small environment you occupy. I couldn’t walk two steps out of my house without taking a moment to examine a bug and wonder about its world—its umwelt—or consider the birds in flight or the cats in the windows.
An Immense World might just be my favorite non-fiction book.
Slow Productivity, by Cal Newport
Despite hesitations about reading this one, I found it had a lot more depth than your typical “productivity” book. There are plenty of practical suggestions for productive work, but the idea of slowness was especially compelling for me.
Through several stories, such as the Italian “slow food movement,” prolific artist Georgia O’Keefe, and writer John McPhee, Newport paints a picture of the powerful work that can be achieved through the slow, natural, human pace.
More than anything, this book brought to my attention the importance of slowness. Although immediacy has become a cultural value, this runs counter to the way humans work and acquire skills. The highest quality is even more premium now that AI is exponentially contributing to fast food style content (images, text, code).
There’s always a place for speed, but speed isn’t always the appropriate value, depending on what you’re trying to achieve. Success—whatever that may mean—is a long game. Slowness has and will serve us well if we develop the wisdom and the discipline to invite it back into our lives.
Ancestor Trouble, by Maude Newton
I hate genealogy. This book grabbed my interest despite my loathing and I couldn’t leave it unfinished. There are so many ways that our biological families impact us—for good and bad—and Newton doesn’t shy away from addressing abuse, privilege, racism, confusion, and connection.
The technology side of genealogy and DNA testing is debated for its incredible usefulness and the disturbing potential for harm or exploitation.
If you want to understand human relationships with ancestors, this is as good as it gets. My big takeaway was to approach my connection to the past with a bias toward forgiveness. While I’m not in a space where I want to know my ancestors on a deeper level, this book did open my mind to the possibility of approaching them in a healthy way, in my own time, according to my own needs and wants.
Pathogenesis, by Jonathan Kennedy
I have one chapter left. It was an astounding read.
On par with the can’t-put-it-down writing style of An Immense World, this book is packed to the brim with information, expressed through stories that might be familiar but have a whole new dimension to them.
Diseases have played an integral role in how great empires were weakened or emboldened, how the North and the South became divided over slavery in the U.S., how religions flourished or were abandoned.
It is a breathtaking look at human recorded history, but it also elicited a kind of mourning from me. The massive scope of death and suffering caused by disease, hubris, confirmation bias, and greed is stunning. I think it is worth the painful read to be able to reverence those billions of lives lived and lost throughout history.
Cyborg
I hope you can find rest and recovery time as the year is ending.
The systems at play in our lives—both social and technological—are powerful and, at times, exhausting. From what I’ve learned from the authors above, I’m planning on approaching this next year with curiosity, forgiveness (this one will seriously test me), grace, and questions.
There’s a lot of pain, there’s a lot of hardship, and there’s a lot of connection, there’s a lot of people who care. I hope to be able to hold onto the hope in humanity that we need to move forward together.
In the meantime…Have you read any of the books above? Any recommendations for me this next year?