Last year, I stopped logging books on Goodreads. I was tired of failing to meet my reading goal year after year. The joy of reading a book would be instantly overshadowed by the disappointment that I had not finished it in the time allotted. My reading was solely to generate data on me, as though it were a performance before the machine. It felt as if my entire literary pursuit had only been deemed valuable when reduced to user stats. This is exactly what the algorithm wants, that we stop thinking for our selves. The less we contribute to the scroll, we become more impressionable to the discourse. We are supposed to forget that there is a world outside of these echo chambers, and become increasingly dismissive towards opinions that differ from our own. In such an environment, reading and critical thinking become small acts of independence. Reading is the only way to develop original thinking. Here is a list of books which will help you think for yourself. Exquisite Cadavers is a novel that is both a work of fiction and criticism. It is a novel about two young people navigating their love in London. Being able to hold opposing perspectives without collapsing them is a key skill of awareness. This is also the structure of the novel, which creates alternate spaces for the author’s two lines of thinking. Kandasamy draws on a rich literary history to place her work at a crossroads between creating and critiquing. She has similar goals for the reader.
