How my love affair with books has morphed over the years

I’ve read thousands of books in my life. I began reading as soon as I was able, and never really stopped. A busy year makes for a slow reading year, and in those times I read roughly 25 books. I’ve been interested in the fields of Psychology, Neuroscience, Nutrition, Holistic Health and Somatic Experiencing for the past 10 years, books on those topics constantly dominating my ever growing bookshelves.

In High School I embarked on a mission to read all of the classics, then I read all of the hateful, arrogant male authors of the 20’s and 50’s, like Hemingway, and Kerouac respectively—oh, and let’s not forget Bukowski. I considered having ceremonial book burnings at the conclusion of every tasteless novel they wrote. I also read the great female authors and poets, like Jane Austen, Emily and Charlotte Bronte, and Sylvia Plath. Naturally, I sprinkled in some of the best Russian novelists, Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky. I completely exhausted my local library before I turned 18, reading every mildly interesting Young Adult novel in there and then graduating to more mature reading. It was not, and still is not uncommon for me to read [and finish] one to two books in a day.

I adore reading. It’s the medium I feel most comfortable learning in, and it’s endlessly fascinating. I have what they call ‘a voracious appetite’ for it. The vast majority of the books on these lists I’ve read on paper, though I do occasionally listen to books when I am taking long drives or otherwise traveling. I am a fierce annotator, underliner, and highlighter when I am reading, especially when it is at all technical, as it most often is with interests like mine. I’ve spent the last 10 years healing my body from the inside out teaching myself as I go through textbooks, and books written by doctors, Phd’s, and other highly educated individuals. I do this because I appreciate the deep understanding of the topic that they offer, and at this point in my life I rarely read a book with less than 30 pages of sources and citations. I have also found excellent books written by people like me, autodidacts searching for truth and found those to be equally informative, and often much more fun to read. It’s easy to forget about the restrictions that come with being formally educated. I’m here for authentic information.

I frequently check up on and read the resources offered, and take most of my book suggestions from the books I’m reading. It’s an endless loop of fascinating information. Education has always been done through reading of books and textbooks such as the ones I read. After a short stint in the world of formal education I effortlessly decided that my time would be better spent educating myself. That is what I have done. Unfortunately I did not think to keep a record of the books I was reading until I began seeing clients in 2015, and then I saw the need. Then I misplaced the first two years of records. This is one reason why I now keep a digital record, as well as a physical record of my readings, in addition to purchasing all of my books instead of borrowing.

I have the type of memory where I can recall exactly where a thing is written on a page, and what page it’s on. For this reason, I wildly prefer reading physical books, and in fact many of the audiobooks I have listened to I immediately purchase paper copies and read them again, so that I can maintain every morsel of information to the best of my ability. There is no shame in audiobooks, I find they have their time and place, but for me, hardcopies will always be my preference.

I have set up this section of my website to exhibit an alternative to formal education, and how much learning can be done by following one’s own curiosity. Above all I believe that we are highly capable of teaching ourselves anything we set our minds to.

I intend to use this section to give an example of the various disciplines I have studied to bring you the curriculum, and expertise I offer in working 1:1 with you. I am currently in the process of writing two books, one on variable trauma and healing, and the other on nutrition. In these books I intend to organize my reading lists to be resources for anything you may like to read about on you own. I do not recommend that everyone read all of the books that I have read, some of them are simply not worth the time. I’m always happy to offer suggestions or directions in which books to start with in various subjects, or which I found the most helpful, or wished I had read earlier, or in a different order.

Eventually I hope to create a DIY course for anyone to be able to take themselves through the basics of health and wellness, complete with a chronological reading list, ordered to be comprehensive and build on itself. I believe that we are our own most competent healers and we need only the tools and knowledge in order to transform our lives. That is what I have done, and what I now teach others to do.