oh this perfectly captures how it feels to be a reader. I haven't been able to lock into Bibliophobia but this is an excellent adaption. Here's to finding more books where "love does not nearly mean enough." <3
Hi Scamp! Such beautiful writing. Such command of the English language! I could be happy reading your prose to the end of my own life. For me, a powerful book that changed the way I looked at love was James Clavell's book Tai-Pan. A friend gave me an old copy of the book and I read it, fascinated by the story but especially the love story of the protagonist with his Chinese mistress. When I finished the book, I immediately returned to the beginning and read it again. Then a third time, with the back pages falling from the old copy. There is a lot of brutality in the book, but for me it is the true love that holds my heart and changed the way I look at China and the Chinese. Much has changed since the time described in the novel but my love for Asia never will.
All This Could Be Different by Sarah Thankam Mathews. It's always All This Could Be Different by Sarah Thankam Mathews. I was a reader before, I've been a reader since, but All This Could Be Different made me cry on the Subway, read it in three days, it's a book I constantly think about, maybe it's what made me realize I'm queer, and I can't shake it. I read it back in 2022 on a whim after someone at Yu & Me Books was like "this one" and I looked into the light and said "yes, okay" and started reading it on the Subway immediately after I left. Anyways, loved this post, and love Tuck Everlasting, happy I made it to the USA in time for that to have been required reading :)))
I have been waiting for a chance to tell you this but my life ruiner is Stoner and I heard about it from you. I am 44 so, obviously, I had already read many beautiful works of fiction that moved me deeply but when I read Stoner last year and it just shook me to my core in a way that felt profoundly different from anything else I'd ready before. I now just carry that feeling in my heart every day and expect will do so forever. THANK YOU.
oh my goodness petya i am so touched by this! stoner is of course one of mine, too. will never forget the ending of the chapter where his parents visit him for the first time… and so many other moments and feelings and sentences. i’m so glad i was part of its journey to finding you. <3
Gorgeous gorgeous prose! And gosh you have me thinking and unfolding the pages of my own memory…I think my Life Ruiner was Becoming by Laura Jane Williams. I was 20, struggling to fit in with the people around me and find my way through, then those words came and the spark to both read and write caught gasoline. Quickly tumbled in other memoir of self-discovering and coming - Eat, Pray, Love notably. These stories served as both guidebook and permission slip to use words as a tool to find my own way.
Thank you for promoting me to reminisce the origins of my reading love affair!
Can I have many? “Kafka on the Shore” by Haruki Murakami must be the biggest one, it dealt with a lot of the feelings I was going through at my weirdly mature and so immature age of 14, just another depressed teenager thinking that they’re so profound. The theme of forgiveness stuck with me the most. The book taught me to forgive my not-exactly-how-I-wished-she’d-be mother. My mother’s nothing like the protagonist’s mother. My mother is the strongest woman I know. I value the quiet life more since reading the book. I value everyday interactions at bookstores and cafes. I have a much bigger tender spot in my heart for not-so-abled seniors. The book taught me empathy. Taught me compassion. Something I’ve always held tightly, I wasn’t a psychopath before reading this, I just hadn’t seen empathy articulated so empathetically. I don’t know if this is spoken about commonly when people are talking about Kafka on the Shore. Self-sufficiency is another big one. Kafka really, really inspired me. I’m sure that everywhere in my brain, the book’s themes of metaphysics and the subconscious (and everything else) is absorbed, but I genuinely do not remember most of what happens with these themes in it’s plot. I remember the ideas though. I should really reread this book haha.
i love this!! the books read and loved at 14 were also similarly speaking to the part of me that wanted her sadness to be profound (virgin suicides by jeffrey eugenides….). but they still taught me a lot and gave me “tender spots”, as you say, that i carry to this day.
I love the idea of the Life Ruiner. you mention some that would def be contenders for my personal list — all of the My Brilliant Friend novels, Stoner!! For me I would also add Jane Eyre. possibly Intermezzo even
Thank you for your eloquently written piece on Bibliophobia and the intimate way you traced your relationship with books—how they reshaped you, reassembled your sense of self. There was something so tender and familiar in the way you described that transformation—it reminded me of what happened to me when I read Radio Silence by Alice Oseman. That book did something rare to me—it didn’t just tell a story, it told mine. It put into words the things I hadn’t yet admitted out loud. It captured the strange dissonance of being surrounded by people and still feeling unreachable, unknown.
There’s a line in the book that reads, “Being clever was my one thing. The thing that meant I might be special. The thing that meant I might be worth something.” I remember stopping cold when I read that—because I’d thought the same thing, word for word, on days when I felt like I was fading from view.
Since reading it, I almost feel needy—for another book to do what Radio Silence did. I want to unravel again. I want a story to expose me, to open me up emotionally, the way this one did.
Radio Silence speaks in the private language of those who live inside their heads—those who replay conversations long after they’ve ended, who hope that one day someone might understand the whole of them without needing translation. It gave shape to the quiet fear that the truest parts of me might never be seen—or worse, might be seen and rejected. The characters, especially Frances and Aled, ache in the exact places I do. And in that mutual ache, I felt known.
“I wonder—if nobody is listening to my voice, am I making any sound at all?” Frances asks. And maybe that’s the heart of it: this book listened. And because it listened, I made a sound. I mattered.
No book had ever done that for me—to me. It transformed my love of reading into something deeper: an insatiable hunger. A need. A downward spiral of speed and depth, where books became not only necessary—but vital.
As a side note, I’ll have to pick up Bibliophobia—I’ve heard remarkable things, and it seems precisely in line with what I’m drawn to.
oh this perfectly captures how it feels to be a reader. I haven't been able to lock into Bibliophobia but this is an excellent adaption. Here's to finding more books where "love does not nearly mean enough." <3
I actually also struggled to lock into Bibliophobia but love and connect with its core intention! Thank u for reading of course….❤️
Hi Scamp! Such beautiful writing. Such command of the English language! I could be happy reading your prose to the end of my own life. For me, a powerful book that changed the way I looked at love was James Clavell's book Tai-Pan. A friend gave me an old copy of the book and I read it, fascinated by the story but especially the love story of the protagonist with his Chinese mistress. When I finished the book, I immediately returned to the beginning and read it again. Then a third time, with the back pages falling from the old copy. There is a lot of brutality in the book, but for me it is the true love that holds my heart and changed the way I look at China and the Chinese. Much has changed since the time described in the novel but my love for Asia never will.
thank you, John! I too have books with missing pages and cleaved spines.
All This Could Be Different by Sarah Thankam Mathews. It's always All This Could Be Different by Sarah Thankam Mathews. I was a reader before, I've been a reader since, but All This Could Be Different made me cry on the Subway, read it in three days, it's a book I constantly think about, maybe it's what made me realize I'm queer, and I can't shake it. I read it back in 2022 on a whim after someone at Yu & Me Books was like "this one" and I looked into the light and said "yes, okay" and started reading it on the Subway immediately after I left. Anyways, loved this post, and love Tuck Everlasting, happy I made it to the USA in time for that to have been required reading :)))
ahh i really must read this now!! i love this so much.
bibliophobia sounds really interesting i'm so intrigued! and your review is so so beautiful!!
I have been waiting for a chance to tell you this but my life ruiner is Stoner and I heard about it from you. I am 44 so, obviously, I had already read many beautiful works of fiction that moved me deeply but when I read Stoner last year and it just shook me to my core in a way that felt profoundly different from anything else I'd ready before. I now just carry that feeling in my heart every day and expect will do so forever. THANK YOU.
oh my goodness petya i am so touched by this! stoner is of course one of mine, too. will never forget the ending of the chapter where his parents visit him for the first time… and so many other moments and feelings and sentences. i’m so glad i was part of its journey to finding you. <3
Gorgeous gorgeous prose! And gosh you have me thinking and unfolding the pages of my own memory…I think my Life Ruiner was Becoming by Laura Jane Williams. I was 20, struggling to fit in with the people around me and find my way through, then those words came and the spark to both read and write caught gasoline. Quickly tumbled in other memoir of self-discovering and coming - Eat, Pray, Love notably. These stories served as both guidebook and permission slip to use words as a tool to find my own way.
Thank you for promoting me to reminisce the origins of my reading love affair!
isn’t it wild how you just know which books! i love this, thank you for reading and sharing :,)
Love how you talk about a book feeling like it's all yours-- and hearing about the one which felt like that for you! Such a beautiful essay!
thank you celine! so interested in hearing what yours is/are!
Can I have many? “Kafka on the Shore” by Haruki Murakami must be the biggest one, it dealt with a lot of the feelings I was going through at my weirdly mature and so immature age of 14, just another depressed teenager thinking that they’re so profound. The theme of forgiveness stuck with me the most. The book taught me to forgive my not-exactly-how-I-wished-she’d-be mother. My mother’s nothing like the protagonist’s mother. My mother is the strongest woman I know. I value the quiet life more since reading the book. I value everyday interactions at bookstores and cafes. I have a much bigger tender spot in my heart for not-so-abled seniors. The book taught me empathy. Taught me compassion. Something I’ve always held tightly, I wasn’t a psychopath before reading this, I just hadn’t seen empathy articulated so empathetically. I don’t know if this is spoken about commonly when people are talking about Kafka on the Shore. Self-sufficiency is another big one. Kafka really, really inspired me. I’m sure that everywhere in my brain, the book’s themes of metaphysics and the subconscious (and everything else) is absorbed, but I genuinely do not remember most of what happens with these themes in it’s plot. I remember the ideas though. I should really reread this book haha.
i love this!! the books read and loved at 14 were also similarly speaking to the part of me that wanted her sadness to be profound (virgin suicides by jeffrey eugenides….). but they still taught me a lot and gave me “tender spots”, as you say, that i carry to this day.
I love the idea of the Life Ruiner. you mention some that would def be contenders for my personal list — all of the My Brilliant Friend novels, Stoner!! For me I would also add Jane Eyre. possibly Intermezzo even
jane eyre is one of my blind spots, i've never read it! but i feel like i need to soon...
this was so delicious stacey !!!!! let's talk about life ruiners next time we hang <3
can't wait to hear yours!!
Oooh saving this to read on Sunday
I’ve always wanted to be somebody’s saved post!
Thank you for your eloquently written piece on Bibliophobia and the intimate way you traced your relationship with books—how they reshaped you, reassembled your sense of self. There was something so tender and familiar in the way you described that transformation—it reminded me of what happened to me when I read Radio Silence by Alice Oseman. That book did something rare to me—it didn’t just tell a story, it told mine. It put into words the things I hadn’t yet admitted out loud. It captured the strange dissonance of being surrounded by people and still feeling unreachable, unknown.
There’s a line in the book that reads, “Being clever was my one thing. The thing that meant I might be special. The thing that meant I might be worth something.” I remember stopping cold when I read that—because I’d thought the same thing, word for word, on days when I felt like I was fading from view.
Since reading it, I almost feel needy—for another book to do what Radio Silence did. I want to unravel again. I want a story to expose me, to open me up emotionally, the way this one did.
Radio Silence speaks in the private language of those who live inside their heads—those who replay conversations long after they’ve ended, who hope that one day someone might understand the whole of them without needing translation. It gave shape to the quiet fear that the truest parts of me might never be seen—or worse, might be seen and rejected. The characters, especially Frances and Aled, ache in the exact places I do. And in that mutual ache, I felt known.
“I wonder—if nobody is listening to my voice, am I making any sound at all?” Frances asks. And maybe that’s the heart of it: this book listened. And because it listened, I made a sound. I mattered.
No book had ever done that for me—to me. It transformed my love of reading into something deeper: an insatiable hunger. A need. A downward spiral of speed and depth, where books became not only necessary—but vital.
As a side note, I’ll have to pick up Bibliophobia—I’ve heard remarkable things, and it seems precisely in line with what I’m drawn to.