I Changed My Mind by Changing My Bookshelf

While reading should never feel like an obligation, I do believe there’s a certain responsibility that comes with being a reader, or even someone deeply curious about literature. One of the most powerful aspects of reading is the ability to step into someone else’s world, to think through their perspective, and to experience life through a lens entirely different from your own. It’s often labeled as escapism, but more than anything, it’s a form of understanding. Books offer one of the fastest and most intimate ways to learn about cultures, places, and experiences we may never encounter firsthand.

In a world increasingly shaped by technology especially one driven by AI and constant information flow, there’s something essential about maintaining that balance. Reading, particularly books that challenge your thinking, allows you to slow down, question, and engage deeply. It sharpens not just what you learn, but how you learn and retain knowledge. Choosing to read past your comfort, beyond familiarity, becomes less about escape and more about expansion, of thought, and perspective.

I read because I love reading, but I also read to hold myself accountable, to continuously expand my perspective and deepen my understanding of the world, and to resist becoming narrow-minded or overly individualistic. In many ways, this mindset extends directly into my work as a designer. The only way I’m able to do meaningful work is by fully immersing myself in the experience of the user I’m designing by putting myself in their shoes and working through solutions from their point of view, not my own. If I were to stay confined to my own way of thinking, my work would suffer, and realistically, my career wouldn’t exist in the way it does. Both reading and design demand the same thing: the willingness to step outside of yourself.

That’s why I always try to emphasize the importance of reading diversely. It fosters empathy, which I believe is one of the most essential traits we can have as citizens of the world. The ability to remove yourself from the myopic confines of your immediate environment and to truly understand and connect with people across different cultures and experiences, it is something we’re slowly losing. And that, more than anything, is why it’s worth protecting.

With the rise of AI, and society’s growing tendency to rely on tools like ChatGPT for answers even for deeply personal guidance, we’re beginning to see a shift in how we relate to one another. I recently came across someone sharing that their therapist suggested turning to ChatGPT for advice, and while that may seem efficient or accessible, it also signals something deeper. There’s a risk that in outsourcing reflection and connection, we become more inward-facing or more isolated, and ultimately more self-centered.

The kind of empathy generated by AI, no matter how convincing, is still simulated. It’s structured, predictive, and manufactured. Real empathy, on the other hand, is something that can only be developed through lived experience, through conversations, through discomfort, through being present in real communities with real people. When we begin to replace those interactions with artificial substitutes, we risk dulling one of the most fundamentally human traits we have.

Because of this, I’ve put together a “shortish” list of books that have genuinely challenged the way I think, works that pushed me to engage with perspectives that don’t always align with my own and, in doing so, expanded how I understand the world. Please keep in mind that some of these are extremely outdated in terms of political correctness (and correctness in general).

19th Century Classics

Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky

Great Expectations by Charles Dickens

The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

20th Century Classics

Ulysses by James Joyce

The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka

Terms of Endearment by Larry McMurtry

Contemporary Fiction (21st Century)

Everything Is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer

Memoirs

Girl, Interrupted by Susanna Kaysen (the movie is also amazing!)

Philosophy

The Art of Living by Epictetus

Essays

A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf

Poetry

Howl and Other Poems by Allen Ginsberg (yes I read this because of Jess from Gilmore Girls)