Related Notes
Growing up I was an “addicted” reader. Between AAU basketball games, I’d sneak in a couple pages. My parents happily enabled my reading and would supply me with all types of books. We’d frequent Half-Price books with my siblings as we all took a big liking to reading. I was big into Sci-FI, History, Sports, teen fiction, even romance. Whatever I could get my hands on, I engulfed.
I stopped reading around my junior year of highschool to “focus on books” and didn’t really pick it back up until after my Freshman year of college. It was during COVID and I selling Vivint smart homes. I realized I wanted to level up my life so I devoured all the self-help books around me. Rich dad poor dad, The secret, Can’t Hurt Me(still my favorite audiobook of all time), and plenty of others. I enjoyed the content, though repetitive and dry. In all honesty, I felt this was the path to increasing my knowledge and “gaining an edge”
I don’t know the specific day, but one day I about 2022ish, I jsut couldn’t take it anymore. No more self-help, especially without taking any action. Wathcing my favorite anime Psycho Pass also inspired me to read the classics. I missed the novels of my childhood. In-depth and tried characters that would pull on my heartstrings as I engage in their story. I first started with Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep and read almost the whole thing on my flight to London. While my friends were napping from JetLag, I finished it and was amazed at all the things I was missing. I truly forgot how nice it was to immerse myself in a book. With self-help, I felt I was counting donw the pages till completion. Hopping back into fiction, I could read with tire, and wanted more content than what was available. From there, I started to explore more of the sci-genre, with William Gibson and Philip K dick. Nueromancer took me for a ride. Ubik was exceptional. I picked up The Martian Chronicles collection of short stories for arouind $3 at a book thrift store in Vegas. I would yearn to read more and more of the stories and had to limit myself to enjoy and not read too fast.