Lindsay Varnum: Reading To Make Connections

I help people become the next version of themselves.

When I wake up in the morning, I usually have to read for a while until something inspires me so much I’m compelled to get my body out of bed, into the office, and writing. I read and write in the morning and I usually practice singing, too. I don’t consider myself a professional musician, but I have a swing band with a steady gig and other concerts that come up. It’s a hobby that sometimes takes more time than my occupation. Afternoons are client calls, more reading, a walk/hike down to the beach (I live on a mountainside next to the Mediterranean), and meeting up with friends. At night, depending on which night it is, I have concerts, go to swing dance parties, or relax at home.

I’m rereading the autobiographies of Maya Angelou. I just started the fifth, All God’s Children Need Traveling Shoes. I’m fascinated by the diverse personal transformations Dr. Angelou accomplished during her lifetime and how.

It was Little House on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder, and it was love at first sight.

Bookmarker. I admit to judging people who fold pages.

When I read Meditations by Marcus Aurelius. I was in crisis and a friend recommended it. The beauty of the writing enchanted me and I was moved by both the mundane and not-so-mundane struggles of this man, at the time the most powerful on earth. I was inspired by him and as I learned more about Stoicism and began to incorporate Stoic practices into my own life, the crisis I was going through didn’t seem nearly so overwhelming.

I have always read so compulsively and so intuitively for whatever stage I found myself in, I don’t know that I can think of a book I wish I had read earlier than when I read it. I can tell you a couple of books I read at those ages that affected how I viewed myself and how I lived my life. At age sixteen I first read Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell. I liked, admired, and respected the spoiled and unethical Scarlett more than any of the women from the Bible or Book of Mormon I was encouraged to emulate. At the time I kept my adoration of Scarlett to myself and she served as a secret bad girl muse for while. Ok, actually I have thought of a book I wish I had read at age 25. 48 Laws of Power by Robert Greene. I only discovered and read this excellent book a few years ago. I re-read my notes from it every few months. The genius of this book is in its amorality, presenting these diverse means of accruing power while leaving it up to the reader to apply their own individual understanding of right and wrong. Like no other, this book has helped me successfully navigate power plays, turning the tables on those who would take advantage of me.

1. Maya Angelou, because she was a fascinating conversationalist and she inspires me like few others. She also intimidated the hell out of people, and she occasionally did unexpected, wild things at social gatherings.

2. Michel de Montaigne, inventor of the essay, lover of the Stoic philosophers, and unparalleled conversationalist. But I’d invite him mainly because it seems he was a life-of-the-party kind of guy.

3. Frida Kahlo. Eleven years ago I went to the United States premier of a Kahlo exhibition in celebration of the 100th anniversary of her birth and since then I’ve been obsessed. Her diary mesmerizes me. She had an intoxicating love for life in spite of her suffering.

4. D. H. Lawrence. I haven’t read Lady Chatterly’s Lover, but Sons and Lovers, Women in Love, and The Rainbow impress me to the extent that he’s right up there amongst my favorite British novelists. As much as I like Jane Austen and Thomas Hardy, I’m not seeing them at this dinner party. So Lawrence it is.

5. For the last, I’m cheating and inviting a non-author. I’ve been a little in love with legendary Scribner editor Max Perkins since reading the A. Scott Berg biography. It was his quiet, yet powerful friendship and endless patience that nurtured some of our greatest American authors. In many ways, Max Perkins was the perfect Stoic. He strikes me as one of those rare sorts who could fully enjoy a dinner party gone wild, as I think this one would, and yet never lose his equanimity.

Now I see that all five of my dinner party guests are dead. Oh, well! Can’t be helped.

The Romantic Poets, with selections from Byron, Colerige, Keats, Blake, Wordsworth, and Shelley. I was looking for a book of Keats only but I had to buy this one when I saw it. The gorgeous soft, orchid-purple cover with glittery fuchsia roses convinced me. It’s the most beautiful book I own and for sure the most feminine looking!

My favourite thing about reading is that it keeps me alive and in good working order, much like healthy food or good sex. My next favorite is how easy reading makes it for me to connect with people: the authors, the characters, other readers, and myself.

Go Tell It on the Mountain by James Baldwin.

I would like to be inserted into a setting more than any one book. Plunk me down on a magical island like that of Shakespeare’s The Tempest. The Indonesian islands of The Ten Thousand Things by Maria Dermout would do, or the Caribbean island from Wide Sargasso Sea, or Willow Springs in Mama Day by Gloria Naylor. Exotic fruits and mysterious, powerful, feminine magic are a must. These settings, even more than the stories and characters, beckon to me and stay with me long past the last page.

If we’re talking practical philosophy, I’d go with Philosophy for Life: And Other Dangerous Situations by Jules Evans (enjoy Jules Evans’ reading list here). It introduces the important thinkers and ideas from ancient classical philosophy and includes examples of how these philosophies are inspiring people in their lives now. I also recommend The Daily Stoic: 366 Meditations for Clarity, Effectiveness, and Serenity by Ryan Holiday and Stephen Hanselman (see Ryan Holiday’s reading list here). The selections are good, Holiday’s commentary is appropriate, and Hanselman’s elegant, accessible translations are the best.

What have I done to you that you would ask me this question? Why are you trying to torture me? You seemed like such a decent, polite man. Well, if you asked me this ten years ago I would have said the Bible and felt seditious for not saying The Book of Mormon, when the true answer was probably Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell. Now I’m tempted to answer Meditations by Marcus Aurelius, but the real answer is probably The Pursuit of Love by Nancy Mitford or some such thing. Wait! I’ve got it: A Good Man is Hard to Find and Other Stories by Flannery O’Connor. I first read those stories when I was fifteen and they continue to be as fresh, startling, and transformational for me as the first time I read them. I can always go back to them and I do. It didn’t come to mind at first, but there is no other book that I’ve found myself periodically turning over in my mind like I have that one.

Marcus Aurelius, Montaigne, and Rumi. I’ve been particularly drawn to the mystical poet Rumi lately.

For sure. Here are five (besides those already mentioned) that have inspired me to a degree that I don’t like to think what my life would be without having read them:

Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar by Cheryl Strayed, The Mayor of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy, The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway, My Life in France by Julia Child and The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald.

I have several I’m anxious to sink my teeth (or eyes) into. Blues Legacies and Black Feminism: Gertrude “Ma” Rainey, Bessie Smith, and Billie Holiday by Angela Davis. I think these three artists continue to have a potent feminist influence on society today and I’m interested to know what Angela Davis thinks about it. How to Change Your Mind: The New Science of Psychedelics by Michael Pollan. The Ayahuasca ceremonies I participated in recently in Peru were some of the most profound spiritual experiences of my life. I’ve read several books about shamanism and plant medicine and now I’m interested to read about it from a science perspective. And then a novel: Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, about the Biafran War in Nigeria in the 1960s. Now that I’m doing African dance, I’m interested in learning more about African history.