As a librarian and avid producer and consumer of the written word, I truly believe that every book teaches some lesson, furthers some agenda, speaks to some element of the human experience. The tragedies that have befallen me during the previous 5 years have left me numb, unable to connect with people and things on any truly meaningful level. It's virtual death for someone like me, someone so used to expression being a shield against the onslaught of life.
And this little experiment, this is my attempt to salvage the remnants of a broken self and forge something new. For isn't that how the best things are born? Narsil was forged anew after being shattered. The phoenix arose from its own ashes. Maybe failure happens when you try to start completely over. Maybe there is no starting over, only picking the best aspects of what has become useless and giving them utility once more.
100 books in 2016. That's the plan. There will be no rhyme or reason to these titles, and that is very much the point.
The first, as it happens was a self-help book and also a confessional of a sort, by the social worker and TED talk queen, Brene Brown. It's called The Gifts of Imperfection and it's first up in my yearlong of analysis of what humanity means and how one goes about reconnecting with it.
