A month since my last blog…and I finally finished the books I was reading. Month three of the year and I’m only two books down.

Why?

Because I struggled with these two. They weren’t authors I had ever read before nor were they genres I normally am attracted to but since this year seems all about stepping out of my comfort zone I endured the pain of not understanding 400 pages of pure science and then 300 pages of reading a book on book reviews.

If anything, “The Universe in your hand,” was so confusing that the author three quarters of the way in, admitted that it should be confusing. The second book, “The year of reading dangerously,” was less confusing but just as random. Random in the sense that the author takes you on a journey of him attempting to read all the books he lied about reading and when he finally reads them he states what he thinks about them.

While the knowledge gained by both books was immense, and learning that apparently Dan Brown’s “Da Vinci Code” isn’t well written at all (what would I know, it was entertaining enough), it opened my mind to wanting to explore outside of my normal genres. Not because I thoroughly enjoyed reading either book (confusion was amongst the biggest emotions felt) but because they were a challenge. It has been a while since I read a book that I needed to stop and think about, or process and actually decide if I agree or not with what was written. My normal genres border mostly on bettering myself as a human so they would either fall under spiritual, weirdly enough, or fiction. I am intrigued by how the mind works and how some people have an ability to take every situation they’re in and turn it into something positive. Or better yet, they create the life they want. What secret (that’s also a really great book to read) do they know about that the rest of us don’t? And if it is not a secret then why aren’t the rest of us doing what they’re doing?

But I digress.

After these two books my conclusion is this: 1. Science can be explained easily but requires imagination to understand. 2. I’m even more confused by the “why do we exist” thoughts. 3. Reading an entire book on one man’s opinion of other books wasn’t really about his opinion but more about his experience of the books themselves. Whether he enjoyed them or not was different to what he experienced because of them. As the author puts it, “When we find a painting or a novel or a musical we love, we are briefly connected to the best that human beings are capable of, in ourselves and others, and we are reminded that our path through the world must intersect with others. Whether we like it or not, we are not alone.”

I’m finally moving onto my third book. My aunt recommended an author she loves. I read one of his books last year and it was entertaining. And weird. I couldn’t decide if it fell under horror or suspense or fantasy. But the feelings I was left with after reading it made me want to read the first book he wrote so I’m now moving on to “The shadow of the wind.”