On Big Books and Healing Brains

Life lately: reading, healing, and following my curiosity

I’ve been thinking a lot about reading lately. Honestly, I’m always thinking about reading. It’s one of my favourite hobbies. Not just what I’m reading, but why I’m reading it.

Not so long ago, as a result of severe CPTSD, my attention span became so poor that I couldn’t even watch Instagram Reels. I was in the depths of a depressive episode and my evenings consisted of endlessly cycling between notifications. WhatsApp. Facebook. Instagram. Messages. Then I’d start the whole loop again. It wasn’t enjoyable. It was driven by deep anxiety. I was avoiding feelings I didn’t yet know how to face, and I think that only prolonged the depression.

People often talk about social media as though we’re all hopelessly addicted to dopamine. I’m sure that’s true for some people. But looking back, I wonder how many people are actually dealing with something deeper. Maybe the social media addiction is really just meeting a need. Maybe your nervous system is completely overwhelmed. Maybe you’re living with trauma, burnout, depression, or grief, and those tiny moments of distraction are giving temporary relief to it all.

I tried to watch films. I couldn’t. I tried to watch series. I couldn’t stay with them. Reading was completely impossible, and for someone who has always loved books, that was probably one of the saddest parts. It also meant I barely worked for about two months because the kind of concentration I relied on simply wasn’t there anymore.

As I slowly recovered, mostly through an enormous amount of rest, daily sunshine, almost daily visits to the beach, yoga, and giving myself far more compassion than productivity, I found I could work again before I could read. Reading took much longer. I started with just a few pages a day, and honestly, even that felt difficult. But I also knew reading itself had always nourished me, so I kept coming back to it gently.

Last year I managed to read thirty-five books. Most of them were fluffy romantasy novels. They weren’t particularly literary, and they weren’t trying to be. They were comforting. They were immersive. They gave my tired brain somewhere else to go for a while, and I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that. We often dismiss lighter fiction as though it’s somehow inferior, but I think books meet us where we are. At that point in my life, those stories were exactly what I needed.

Looking back, I realise reading those books wasn’t just entertainment. It was part of my healing.

Last year I also enrolled at UNISA to continue working towards my BA. I took three modules, including French 101, and somehow managed to earn distinctions in all three. That felt like another sign that my brain was healing. Not because of the marks themselves, but because it was the first time in a long while that I felt my brain working the way it used to. The fog had begun to lift.

This year I’ve already read fifteen books, almost all of them romantasy again, and I can feel another shift happening. Not because I’ve become bored of the genre exactly, but because I seem to have reached the end of the books that are both well written and genuinely compelling. After more than fifty romantasy novels over the past year and a half, I found myself craving something different.

So I started reading Shogun. It’s been sitting on my shelf looking at me for months. When I say started, I really do mean started. It’s enormous. At this rate it may well take me until the end of the year to finish it, and I’m completely okay with that.

I’ve also realised I want to read more big books. The Pillars of the Earth. Lonesome Dove. Maybe even War and Peace one day. Not because I think reading classics makes someone more intelligent or more cultured, and certainly not because I think anyone should read them. I’ve become increasingly suspicious of the word should in almost every area of life anyway.

I don’t think anyone should read books they have no desire to read.

I think willingness matters.

For a long time I wasn’t willing to read heavier books. Honestly, I wasn’t sure I wanted to expose my already bruised mind to stories filled with violence, suffering, cruelty, and all the darkness that many of these books contain. I’m an incredibly sensitive person. I watched horror films as a teenager because that’s just what everyone did in the nineties, and I honestly wish I hadn’t. These days I don’t watch horror at all. Not even true crime either. My nervous system has become much more precious to me.

Even with Shogun, I’m only a few chapters in and already someone has been boiled alive…

So I’ve spent quite a bit of time asking myself whether reading books like this is actually nourishing or whether I’m simply exposing myself to things that don’t leave me feeling better afterwards. I honestly don’t know yet.

I think there is something important these larger books offer that is different from the novels I’ve mostly been reading lately. I find myself asking bigger questions while I read them. They explore power, loyalty, suffering, courage, love, fear, faith, ambition, and belonging. They don’t necessarily give answers, but they invite you to sit with the questions for much longer.

Austin Kleon wrote something that made me smile. He said one of his favourite things about reading the classics is that they’re almost always much weirder than you expect. Apparently within the first fifty pages of War and Peace, a group of drunk men tie a policeman to a bear and throw them both into a river.

Perhaps that’s part of the appeal. We absorb these stories by osmosis long before we ever read them. But then you actually read them and discover they’re stranger, funnier, messier, and far more alive than you’d expected.

One thing I have decided is that I want to read these big books as physical books. My romantasy novels mostly live on my Kindle these days. I borrow them through an online library, load them onto my Kindle with Calibre, and save myself what would otherwise be an alarming monthly book budget. Reading a book a week adds up quickly.

But these larger books feel like more of an investment. Partly because I want my children to see me reading an actual book. Sitting on the couch with a thick novel open on my lap feels different from holding another screen in my hands. They already see enough screens in the world around them. I like the idea that what they mostly see me holding is a book.

Whether I end up reading more classics, more big books, or simply return to another season of romantasy, I don’t really mind.

I’m learning to trust my own reading life instead of trying to optimise it.

There are seasons for comfort and there are seasons for challenge.

Perhaps the real gift is recognising which season you’re in, and giving yourself permission to read accordingly.

With love,