2024-09-14 20:36 UTC

"Reading is just not for me."

On a Sunday afternoon, I was reading René Girard's A Theater of Envy: William Shakespeare at the newly renovated Schine Student Center of Syracuse University.

Many people say, ‘Reading is just not for me.’ I used to feel the same way, and I realize now it wasn’t the act of reading I disliked, but the ‘horrible first interactions’ with books that tricked me into thinking reading was a chore. I'm sure I wasn't the only student who got bored dissecting the metaphors and symbols used in The Great Gatsby or slogging through a dry history textbook on Mesopotamia and the Byzantine Empire. But over time, a few particular experiences changed my perception of reading entirely.

When I was 17, I met a friend named Yang from Beijing in Chicago who said I reminded him of a Japanese figure called ‘Toyotomi Hideyoshi 丰臣秀吉.’ I found this comparison strange since I had no idea who Hideyoshi was. So when he sent me a book with the same name a few months later, I couldn't resist my curiosity to figure out who the f*** that person was, and I finished it within a few weeks. That was the first time I had ever read an entire book cover to cover. It made me realize that maybe it’s not that we dislike reading itself, but that we haven’t been exposed to the right opportunity to spark our curiosity.

Pic 1 was me and Yang having Peking Duck in Beijing; Pic 2 was his gift for me - the "丰臣秀吉" series

But was curiosity enough? That year, I picked up Shoe Dog by Phil Knight and Zero to One by Peter Thiel, but I never made it through either of them. Something was still missing.

Two years later, on one random summer day, my childhood friend KJ told me he had bought a book that day. Then, the very next day, he casually mentioned he had already finished it yesterday. I was shocked! I could barely get through a book in a whole year, let alone a single day. Then I thought, "If someone who I grew up with can finish a book a day, why can't I?" A week later, I bought a book on traditional Chinese architecture and finished it that day. That was the first time I finished a book in one single sitting.

Pic 1+2: KJ, Daphne, Rich, and I were having sushi for lunch in NYC. Pic 3 was the Chinese architecture book.

I realized that developing a love for something requires more than just curiosity—it also requires the right environment and people who push you in that direction.

At 21, I took a course called GEO430: Energy, History, and Society with Professor Matt Huber. He structured the class around book discussions, where we explored topics I was genuinely passionate about. Most of the talking was done by students, based on the readings and the 1000-word essays we wrote before each class. That was the first time I felt a deep connection between reading, writing, and speaking.

These were the books we had to read for GEO 430 class and be ready to discuss at 155 Eggers Hall.

And because every class we need to talk so much, it made me realize:

  • To speak and debate well, you need to think well.

  • To think well, you need to write well.

  • To write well, you need to read well.

This realization of how foundational reading is for clear thinking makes me want to spend more time on reading.

The summer after my junior year, my entire family moved to Thailand. So I decided to take a gap year to join them there. On the flight from NYC to Bangkok, I picked up Michio Kaku's Physics of the Future. The way Kaku described our exciting future through the lens of physics and chemistry was so clear and profound that it changed my worldview. That was the first time I truly started looking at the world through atoms and energy. In the following year, I bought more than a dozen books on physics to continue exploring the universe.

Reflecting on what shifted my attitude from hating to loving to read: (1) a friend who sparked my curiosity with a book series; (2) another friend who triggered me to read better and faster; (3) a mentor who guided me through the process of reading, writing, and speaking, and provided a supportive discussion environment to help me connect the dots; (4) a great popular science book that transformed how I see the world.

I feel very lucky to have experienced these moments, but they didn't just happen to me. I had to make an effort to read the book Yang sent. I intentionally chose Professor Huber’s GEO430 when I saw it was labeled as ‘reading-intensive.’ And I still had to pick and buy Kaku’s Physics of the Future before that flight from JFK to BKK. I did all this knowing I was a poor reader, but I wanted to give myself more chances before giving up on reading.

So how do we learn to love something we once hated? Don't get discouraged by bad first encounters. Give yourself lots and lots of shots. Expose yourself to new opportunities, and eventually, luck will find you. If not on the second try, then maybe on the tenth.

Had I given up on reading after my horrible experiences in middle and high school, I would be a completely different person today. And this makes me also wonder:

how many other things in life have we dismissed too soon just because our first encounter with them was bad?

Inspirations of this blog post: