The One Genre of Books that Really Worth Reading for People who are Lost

Not Self-help books

England is leaving lockdown, and when I visited a local bookstore for the first time in a year, the familiar smell of old papers almost gave me an orgasm (sorry, but I’m a sapiosexual).

Old books, you have been missed.

Turn out books are the one thing that I missed the most during the national lockdown. I usually read during my long commute to and back from work. It was something I started probably back in my student days, and habits are hard to change.

The lack of physical boundaries between work and home as we transit to remote working doesn’t help with various things but especially switching from a laptop to a book. Thankfully, I have eventually set up a reading nook at home for myself, and have started reading by the sea now that I’ve moved to the coast.

One interesting genre of books I’ve picked up during the pandemic is biographies of really interesting people. Now, you must read on because if you go to any bookstores nowadays, it is full of biographies of people that no one should read.

I believe reading biographies can put us into perspectives, and also help lost souls to find directions. Here’s my experience of choosing biographies wisely, some of my recommendations, and if you have any suggestions, please leave me a comment!

Self-help books are brain food

I read somewhere that you know you are ‘adulting’ when your bookshelf starts to accumulate self-help books.

At one point when I was very lost and suffering from anxiety, I was reading a lot of self-help books. From minimalism like Marie Kondo, which I subsequently challenged,

To things about the power of introversion (Quiet by Susan Cain), why IQ doesn't matter (Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell), and this great book that gives a psychological explanation about spiritual awakening.

I love self-help books, but they are theories and lessons. Someone uses their own expertise, research and personal experience to formulate a repeatable plan for others. Some of these lessons are really important, but when we read self-help books, it’s our brain that is learning, not our heart.

Biographies are soul food

Reading self-help books means that we can explain why our parents did certain hurtful things to us, or why everyone has the hope of success if we do the same thing for around 10,000 hours.

But it doesn’t tell us how it feels. Because experiential knowledge can only be experienced, not learned. A book about how we can forgive our hurtful parents doesn’t help us to feel how freeing it is to forgive, it’s as meaningless as watching food videos on YouTube when you have no food at home and hungry (I did that last night, not wise).

Biographies are not the same. Good biographies sometimes have a particular message but not always, and in any case, it is not usually trying to teach us anything directly. It is just talking about, preferably from first-hand experience, the external factors and the internal experience and reflections of a specific person.

They can give us details about things that the media has not bothered writing about (or omitted deliberately to create a certain image) when these details are probably quite significant to make the person the person they are and did what they did.

Through experience their world, values and perspectives, we start to see why they decided to do what they did, and how they subjectively felt. Eventually, if we look up to those people, a high-quality biography helps us to feel realistic, grounded and hopeful.

For example, Late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has written about her first-hand experience the 24 hours before she was appointed by Clinton to the Supreme Court. Those tiny details about the Ginsburgs waiting nervously in D.C. make RBG real. She was, like us, also felt nervous yet needed to be composed, before a big day. She showed she was supported by her beloved, she learned how to relax. We can all relate to it.

Real, subjective experience isn’t imposing knowledge on the readers but help us to relate and feel. I might have nothing in common with an escapee from North Korea, but from her words, I can experience a different dimension of freedom, and as I will mention further down, it helped me to let go from my traumatic past.

How to pick a good biography

When I did anthropology at university, we studied the biographies of some human rights figures critically. It helps me to realise that the power of storytelling as a marketing strategy, even in a political context.

There’s nothing wrong with a compelling story, but the intention matters.

From footballers to politicians, everyone is writing a biography. So we ought to know which ones are branding and marketing stunts, and which ones are adding value to our own value system.

This doesn’t mean a celebrity biography is less meaningful than an activist one. The worst kind of biographies is the one that glorifies a person’s ego, rather than being authentic. The best kind of biographies is the one not trying to push an agenda but to be real about their experience.

I also recommend picking biographies of people that have nothing to do with us. For example, if one is a straight white man, I would recommend branching to read stories of queer non-binary people of colour. As opposed to the feminist books, the real stories of genuine and honest people will give us perspectives, in particular, to love more and hate less, which is what society desperately needs at the moment.

Here are my recommendations

Not all of these are big books. Some are just a chapter of a book or a podcast, and stumbling upon these gems have delighted my soul.

Greta Thunberg’s Summer Talk 2000:

This is a collection of essays written and read by Greta Thunberg for her summer meeting a lot of important people, and pinpointing her experience and views on adults’ politics over a simple and urgent topic of the climate crisis.

I said it’s a simple topic because, after listening to her, I have also picked up Bill Gates’ book on solving the climate crisis. Both have made me realised the national and corporate efforts needed to change almost the ways we produce and use everything.

Sadly, the political leaders just wanted selfies with her.

Eckhart Tolle’s Introduction in his book the Power of Now:

In this short but profound book, there’s a short chapter about his personal experience. Within a split moment, Tolle has transformed from a person suffering from depression and other mental illnesses, to completely free and happy.

He goes on to talk about ‘how’ in the rest of the book, and that’s the self-help element which I’m not going to elaborate further here. But the first-hand experience of being free, for the first time in his life probably, was honest and well delivered to everyone who’s suffering.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg, My Own Words:

This book has answered my long-standing questions and challenges with the popular discourse of feminism and gender equality. Her pragmatism, light-heartedness and compassion were what helped RBG through thicks and thins in life, and achieve great work with absolute clarity.

I think the world is full of people blabbering, and their noise is covering practical people doing actually useful work. After reading this book, I felt fundamentally free in my career, which has led me to a new chapter of my life.

Osamu Dazai, No Longer Human:

It is generally accepted that No Longer Human, whilst a novel, is an autobiography of the Japanese writer Osamu Dazai. He was transparent in this book towards his experience to the rise of totalitarianism discourse in pre-Second World War Japan, and his general half-involved, half-given up in life sort of attitude.

It’s a perfect book for people who have started to see something great within the general negative notion of “loneliness”. As a loneliness researcher and writer, I felt that if Ōba Yōzō (the main character) has sought further within himself, he would’ve found something more freeing than death.

I was stuck for hours writing the introduction for the last book, but I now realise it is exactly the inexplicable feeling of freedom that good biographies will help us to experience. There are no notes, no steps to freedom, no fool-proof methods.

Stories of real persons are full of emotions, blood, and deep experience.

As I stood in front of the biography section of this little bookstore in Brighton, I could smell the pages and this is the smell of the wisdom, stubbornness, pain and freedom from many people aggregated, presented in ink.

That’s the smell of life.

It’s better to live and to live to one’s fullest and sometimes the worst than to live as if we are dead.