With infinite questions about everything in existence, including oneself, desiring the truth about things often presents as a voracious hunger. The ability to see meaning as a transmutable, flowing, contrived, and configured thing can lead a person to submerge themselves in an ocean of wisdom in hopes of even the smallest bit of living, green sustenance sticking to their limbs.
Feeding a Voracious Hunger for Meaning
I was born a meaning-maker. Books are a large part of my lifelong practice of self-discovery, finding my voice, and shaping my perception of what it means to be human. At eight, Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury gave me insight into what the sad adults around me might feel – a longing or regret so deep the grieving season never ends. At 18, I referenced Inner Simplicity: 101 Ways to Regain Peace and Nourish Your Soul by Elaine St. James as if it were a collection of letters from the mother I never had. Her small but essential wisdoms were a guidebook for who I thought I wanted to be in the world. At 21, a therapist told me my life philosophy reminded them of a book, Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl. Now in mid-life, I’ve spent time in its pages in four separate seasons, forging new connections and exploring how my ideas have expanded. Reads such as these are my lifelong friends, literary parents, and treasured mentors whom I consult to remember my roots.
Today, I’m usually reading between 10 to 15 books simultaneously. My favorite reading chair is surrounded by stacks and shelves, sorted by my relationship to the book. A brand new book is a first date, a brief perusal and assessment, potentially leading to more. Nourishing books and secondary research materials are badminton friends – regular, invigorating outings several times a week that support my larger goals. Reads that touch the core of my interests mean it’s time for class – two to three weekly deep sessions for craft study or research. I always have a book to chat with on the kitchen counter when something’s in the oven, and several books relax in the living room, chosen by mood rather than subject, for when I want to cuddle on the couch with Brian Eno records as ambience.
Nearly every time I leave my house, I gorge a Mary Poppins-esque analog bag of magic with my urgent necessities – a few supplies for urban sketching, my commonplace book, and at least three books: a nonfiction, a fiction, and a third format. Each book is part of an evolving conversation between them and within me.
My analog bag.
Books as Relationships Instead of Achievements
“I don’t like to just go through a pile of books. I like books to go through me.”
In my reading practice, it doesn’t matter when, or if, I finish a book, or how many books I read. What matters is who I am becoming, what I’m learning, and the life I’m living.
Most often, I do finish each book, eventually, but my friends Nietzsche, De Beauvoir, and Camus prefer short visits over tea. Their depth and intensity send me on winding paths into my own thought forest. One paragraph of existential philosophy will resonate throughout all of my other reads. My conversations with these thinkers will pop up repeatedly when speaking with friends or acquaintances, and when appropriate and welcome, I share their wisdom.
My relationship with books like Clytemnestra by Costanza Casati, or Babel by R.F. Kuang, or nearly anything in the fantasy genre, is a more fevered affair. They keep me in conversation well into the night, even when I promised myself only an hour or two. I forget myself completely, consumed by story, until I reach the denouement and can finally lay my book and myself to rest.
These books offer beautiful prose, quiet brilliance, studies in form and world-building, and insight into human nature, but they’re not my main sustenance. I devote myself to two or three each month, and miss them as soon as they’re shelved, but we’ll meet again when a book like The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt speaks of life and death in a way that rings of Camus, Nietzsche, and Frankl, as you can see in my commonplace book:
Non-fiction, creative non-fiction, and classics are my trusted besties. We speak daily, for hours on end, and I feel their presence throughout life’s joys and trials. As an autodidact, I choose books that feed my intellectual passions and artistic endeavors. I establish foundational knowledge both from widely referenced sources and brilliant outsiders not typically included in academic syllabi. Each book is a class within a curriculum.
Reading illuminates my days, but research shapes my purpose. My work is not done when I’ve completed a book once: there are many sides to its personality yet to be revealed. I have a small stack of finished first reads, sitting on the edge of my desk, ready for review and collection of highlights, marginalia, and notes. This relationship is like an interview where I deepen my understanding of the material by questioning, probing, and restating. What I gather is synthesized into memoir, teaching materials, dreamwork practices, and all of these conversations become marrow in my bones.
“When reading syntopically, the reader reads many books, not just one, and places them in relation to one another and to a subject about which they all revolve. But mere comparison of texts is not enough. Syntopical reading involves more. With the help of the books read, the syntopical reader is able to construct an analysis of the subject that may not be in any of the books. It is obvious, therefore, that syntopical reading is the most active and effortful kind of reading.”
How to Read a Book by Mortimer J. Adler and Charles Van Doren
Books as Perspective Shifts & Support Systems
Bibliomancy was said to have first been practiced in ancient, Pagan times by the likes of Homer and Virgil. Christians later adapted it, and the first mention I heard of it was in the book Running with Scissors by Augusten Burroughs:
“All the Finches did bible-dips. It was like asking a Magic Eight Ball a question, only you were asking God. The way it worked was, one person held the bible while another person thought of a question to ask God, like, “Should I get my hair cut short?” Then the person holding the bible opened it at random, and the person asking the question dropped his or her finger on the page. Whatever word your finger landed on, this was your answer.”
As a Humanist, I prefer the Pagans’ take. Over two decades ago, I revived this classic ritual in my daily life, expanding it to beloved texts of many genres, and coined the term Literature Dips.
When my need for novelty and objectivity combine, I reach for any book that beckons and dip inside for a witness perspective or a metaphor to amuse, delight, and possibly ignite a creative spark. I pose a question, open to any page, and it becomes a message I imbue with deeper meaning.
Recently, I asked my tomes for a general message about sustaining my wellbeing – something to inspire or direct my awareness. I looked to the bookshelf behind me, and immediately my eye was drawn to Women Who Run with the Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estés.
I opened to a random page, and found this:
I belly-laughed! Who knows? You might find me at a pool hall in the near future. If you’d like, I can do a Literature Dip just for you.
Sometimes a perspective shift looks like changing creative forms. In 2025, my dedication to daily writing and reading inspired a palpable need to give my memories and insights physical form. Books have sometimes served as a vehicle for this new method of expression. My monthly outing to the art walk has transformed from one of appreciation and spectating to an embodied understanding of what it feels like to have art as the lens through which life makes sense.
When I visit library book sales, rummage sales, or use my local Freecycle group to pick up art and reading materials, the world of reading and art collide. Books with crumbling bindings, yellowed pages, or just outright bad writing become art journals, sculptures, or maybe plant stands. Their covers, pages, and passages birth something new, combining our essences.
Creating Meaning through Literary Synchronicities
My ongoing relationship with books permeates my consciousness at all times. Having people to share my love of literature with, as I do in the Commonplace Book Club (CBC) with Jillian Hess, is an irreplaceable joy. The combination of the two is the perfect recipe for literary synchronicities – a term borrowed from Jung but grounded here in human connection rather than cosmic design. They are a map of our repeating themes and similarities, another aspect of the patterns and cycles we experience in all areas of life.
Finding meaning in these coincidental connections is a form of mundane magic that brightens my day and bonds me to others. We’re not just resonating with philosophers, scientists, and authors we’ll likely never have the chance to speak with; we’re sharing what’s meaningful to us with people who get it. We’re bringing new life to the texts and celebrating our humanity and shared love of wisdom.
Here’s one example of literary synchronicity between Susan Carter Morgan of It’s Always the Ocean and me in the CBC:
Reading as the Process of Becoming
This type of life heals the feeling I get when I fear nothing can ever be fully expressed – no thought ever finished. By not counting how many books I read, and instead seeing them as relationships that unfold with their own natural pace, I reinforce the relationship I most want to cultivate within myself. I am not a series of projects to check off a list. I inhabit the process, gathering wisdom, feeling my branches stretch and sway as I evolve. By choosing to read books each day, intentionally cultivating and synthesizing their meaning, I am shaping my person; I am becoming more myself.