Reading 📖

Why I Read

No single reason would be enough to explain why I read. From pursuit of knowledge and slowing down in this fast moving world, to safeguarding my attention span against modern day "brain-rot", reading is a hobby that every day, even at different times of a day, serves me a different purpose. At night to wind down, in the afternoon for personal enjoyment. My two greatest regrets when it comes to reading are that I didn't start earlier and as Frank Zappa said "So many books, so little time.”

Words in Numbers

64 Books Owned
34 Books Completed
6 Books Read This Year

Books That Stayed With Me

The Odyssey

Homer, translated by Robert Fagles

I first heard of this Greek epic through the song “Would You Fall in Love with Me Again?” from EPIC: The Musical. The story in the song—Odysseus, a warrior lost for twenty years, experiencing several struggles, losing his crew to them, and finally reuniting with his beloved wife Penelope—made me want to read the original story for myself. On top of that, Christopher Nolan announced that he would be making a film adaptation, so I knew I had to read the epic before seeing the movie. It is one of the few works of fiction I have read, and it taught me how much fiction can pull the reader into an entirely different world and set the imagination in motion. It was a welcome contrast to the philosophical and religious books I usually spend my time reading. I especially liked the way the story unfolds through recollections of Odysseus’s adventures before building toward his return home to Ithaca and reunion with Penelope. That final stretch is easily one of my favorite moments in anything I have read.

Ah how shameless-the way these mortals blame the gods. From us alone, they say, come all their miseries, yes, but they themselves, with their own reckless ways, compound their pains beyond their proper share.

— Homer, The Odyssey, translated by Robert Fagles

Of all that breathes and crawls across the earth, our mother earth breeds nothing feebler than a man. So long as the gods grant him power, spring in his knees, he thinks he will never suffer affliction down the years. But then, when the happy gods bring on the long hard times, bear them he must, against his will, and steel his heart.

— Homer, The Odyssey, translated by Robert Fagles

Man's Search for Meaning

Viktor E. Frankl

Viktor Frankl was a Holocaust survivor and psychologist who wrote about his experiences in Nazi concentration camps, using them not only to describe the horrors of what he witnessed, but also to reflect on human nature. Throughout the book, he recalls moments that show both the most depressing and the most inspiring sides of people: cruelty, hopelessness, selfishness, but also compassion, dignity, sacrifice, and resilience in circumstances where almost everything had been stripped away.

What stayed with me most was his idea that meaning in life does not have to come from some grand objective or extraordinary achievement. Meaning can be found in the smallest parts of life, in how we respond to what is in front of us, and in what we choose to do with the moment we are given. Even when a person cannot control their circumstances, Frankl argues that there is still something deeply human in the ability to choose how to face them.

“They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way.”

— Viktor E. Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning

That message is probably why the book has stayed with me so strongly. It does not pretend that suffering is meaningful by itself, but instead places meaning in the way a person responds to suffering, to ordinary life, and to the choices they still have left. It made me think of purpose less as something you eventually discover and more as something you continuously create through the way you live.

The Philosophy of the Teachings of Islam

Mirza Ghulam Ahmad (AS)

I have read The Philosophy of the Teachings of Islam twice, which already says a lot about how much the book has stayed with me. What I appreciate most about it is the way it presents religion not simply as a collection of beliefs or rituals, but as a complete way of understanding human nature, morality, spiritual development, and a person's relationship with God.

The book explores ideas such as the different states of the human soul, the purpose of moral discipline, the meaning of true happiness, and the way spiritual growth is connected to the choices a person makes in everyday life. I found that especially meaningful because it treats religion as something that should actively transform a person's character rather than remain only theoretical.

Reading it a second time gave me a different appreciation for it. On the first reading, I was mainly focused on understanding the arguments and ideas being presented. On the second, I found myself reflecting more on how those ideas applied to my own life. That is probably the main reason this book has stayed with me: it is one of those books that gives you more to think about depending on where you are in life when you return to it.

Words Etched in Memory

I have a habit of saving lines from books, poems, speeches, songs, and other things I come across. These are ten that have stayed with me the most.

“Nobody realizes that some people expend tremendous energy merely to be normal.”

— Albert Camus

“Only during hard times do people come to understand how difficult it is to be master of their feelings and thoughts.”

— Anton Chekov

“From childhood's hour I have not been as others were. I have not seen as others saw. I could not awaken my heart to joy at the same tone. And all I loved, I loved alone.”

— Edgar Allan Poe

“All the love in the world is useless when there is total lack of understanding.”

— Franz Kafka

“Pain and suffering are always inevitable for a large intelligence and a deep heart.”

— Fyodor Dostoevsky

“Freethinkers are those who are willing to use their minds without prejudice and without fearing to understand things that clash with their own customs, privileges, or beliefs. This state of mind is not common, but it is essential for right thinking.”

— Leo Tolstoy

“If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs and blaming it on you, if you can trust yourself when all men doubt you, but make allowance for their doubting too; If you can wait and not be tired by waiting, or being lied about, don’t deal in lies, or being hated, don’t give way to hating, And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise: If you can dream-and not make dreams your master; If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim; If you can meet with triumph and disaster, and treat those two impostors just the same; If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools, or watch the things you gave your life to, broken, and stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools: If you can make one heap of all your winnings and risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss, and lose, and start again at your beginnings and never breathe a word about your loss; If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew to serve your turn long after they are gone, and so hold on when there is nothing in you except the will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’ If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue, or walk with kings—nor lose the common touch, If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you, If all men count with you, but none too much; If you can fill the unforgiving minute with sixty seconds’ worth of distance run, yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it, And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!”

— Rudyard Kipling

“When I look back on my past and think how much time I wasted on nothing, how much time has been lost in futilities, errors, laziness, incapacity to live; how little I appreciated it, how many times I sinned against my heart and soul-then my heart bleeds. Life is a gift, life is happiness, every minute can be an eternity of happiness!”

— Fyodor Dostoevsky

“And what's the use of talking, if you already know that others don't feel what you feel?”

— Louis Bourgeois

“There are always plenty of rivals to our work. We are always falling in love or quarreling, looking for jobs or fearing to lose them, getting ill and recovering, following public affairs. If we let ourselves, we shall always be waiting for some distraction or other to end before we can really get down to our work. The only people who achieve much are those who want knowledge so badly that they seek it while the conditions are still unfavorable. Favorable conditions never come.”

— C.S. Lewis

What these quotes say about me?

I wondered whether the things a person chooses to save say something about them. So I gave an AI the ten quotes above without explaining why I chose them and asked it the following:

The Prompt

“These are ten quotes that I have saved over time. Based only on these quotes, what recurring themes do you notice, and what might they suggest about the person who chose to save them?”

The Response

Taken together, these quotes revolve around a few tightly connected themes: feeling inwardly different from other people, wanting to be deeply understood, struggling to govern one’s own mind, enduring suffering without being defeated by it, thinking independently, and refusing to waste one’s life waiting for ideal circumstances. The person who saved them seems strongly drawn to introspection and to the idea that there is a large private world inside a person that others may never fully see—the Camus, Poe, Kafka, Dostoevsky, and Bourgeois quotes especially return to loneliness, emotional intensity, and the frustration of being misunderstood. But the collection is not simply melancholic; there is also a strong countercurrent of self-mastery and responsibility. Kipling emphasizes composure, resilience, humility, and rebuilding after loss; Tolstoy values intellectual independence even when truth challenges one's existing beliefs; Dostoevsky's reflection on wasted time treats life as something precious that should not be squandered; and C. S. Lewis rejects the fantasy that life will eventually become convenient enough for us to begin doing what matters. Collectively, the quotes suggest someone who probably values depth over superficiality, understanding over mere affection, authenticity over conformity, and discipline over surrender to circumstances. There is also an interesting tension running through them: the person seems conscious of being emotionally sensitive and perhaps somewhat solitary, yet simultaneously admires the ability to rise above emotion—to think clearly, keep going, create something meaningful, and maintain one's principles even when life is painful or other people do not understand. In that sense, the collection feels less like a celebration of suffering than an attempt to answer a recurring question: how do you remain deeply feeling, deeply thinking, and genuinely yourself without allowing those very qualities—or the difficulties of life—to prevent you from actually living?