Read ‘em and leap

It can be mind-altering, crossing over from non-fiction to fiction (or the other way round). Where books rooted in reality offer clarity, direction and data, those that spin a yarn embrace the fog we walk through every day

- Charles Assisi

For most of my life, I have read to understand: Policy papers, books on business, biographies of men who built empires and believed they'd figured out how the world works.

Those pages spoke in the language of clarity and logic. I liked that, and still do.

Fiction, on the other hand, made me uneasy. There was too much left unsaid and too little that could be measured. It often felt like I was wandering through a fog without a compass. I missed the clean, straight lines of nonfiction, with its clear conclusions and comfort of closure.

My bookshelves, then, were neat rows of certainty. But that's a problem as well, as someone close to me once said.

She pointed out that if I could look at the shades, listen to the unsaid, and stop trying to measure and quantify, I would encounter a different kind of depth. I told her I'd give it a pass.

Then, some days ago, The Cost of Living, the South African writer Deborah Levy's 2018 "memoir on modern womanhood" (inspired by her life), found me. To be clear, I don't go looking for books like this. But some volumes walk into one's life unbidden.