Hello!
I’m Chris — someone with a lot of random interests (jiu-jitsu, chess, languages, snowboarding). I also love to travel, and most of the photos on this site are ones I’ve taken along the way. But the one constant through every phase of my life has been books.
I never had a video game console growing up (and still thank my parents for that). So when I wasn’t outside with my siblings, I was reading.
In elementary school, I remember reading military books with some questionable language – my dad is a Marine, so they were approved – but my teacher still emailed my mom to make sure they were “age-appropriate.” In middle school, I read under my desk so often that teachers started confiscating my books. By high school, I shifted to reading free Amazon classics on my phone.
I read across every genre. If you scroll through my Goodreads, you’ll find history, sci-fi, business, Mexican short stories, and everything in between.
Books are people’s life work. If someone spends hundreds of hours shaping ideas, stories, and experiences into words, I’d say it’s worth it to see what they discovered in the process.
What You’ll Find on Learning From Literature
I started this blog from my dorm room in college while majoring in Financial Planning – so I did not know how to build a website (and still don’t really). Everything you see here is the result of learning on the go.
LFL is now a mix of everything I love about books and reading:
- Reviews — Spoiler-free commentary that dives into a book’s background, themes, style, and more.
- Notes — Structured notes on nonfiction books – organized by chapter or natural topic divisions.
- Articles — A wide-ranging look at all things literature – from reading tips and author profiles to literary culture.
- Lists — Curated lists of must-read books by genre, author, or theme – perfect if you want to browse widely instead of diving deep into one book.
- Series — Multi-part explorations of my favorite series (more coming soon).
Big shoutout to Tindol – my executive creative director of all things creative. I owe a lot of the aesthetic vibes to her.
My Thoughts on Book Reviews
Books take time to digest. Sometimes I’ll think a book is underwhelming – and then later, something happens in life that reflects one of its main ideas and it hits differently.
Plus: what are we rating? The prose? The plot? The ideas? The emotional impact? Each of us experiences these elements on different levels. A book can be slow, dense, or “difficult” but full of life-changing ideas. Do you average a 2.5 for style with a 5 for insight?
This blog is less about giving verdicts and more about giving context – so you can decide for yourself whether a book is right for you.
Reading, like all art, is deeply personal. One person might love a book for its prose, another for its plot, and another not at all – and none of them are wrong.
It’s also why I call myself a mood reader. If I’m tired, I’m not picking up a dense classic or anything in a foreign language – I might love it, but maybe I wouldn’t love it right now.
I urge all readers to remember that a book is a complex work of art, and reducing it to a single number oversimplifies its depth.
FAQs
I love science fiction. Some of my favorites are Red Rising, Dune, and Foundation. I also really enjoy classics — it’s crazy to read something written decades or even centuries ago and realize that a lot of it still feels familiar today.
On the nonfiction side, I gravitate toward books that offer a new framework for thinking, like Meditations, The Art of Happiness, The Art of Spending, and Essentialism. I also like personal stories that show different perspectives, such as La cuadra and I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.
I have no clue. I started a simple spreadsheet in my senior year of high school (just Title, Author, and Date Read). Since then, I’ve averaged about 100 books a year, so roughly 500 entries. If you want to count books I read as a kid, there’s no telling – but definitely hundreds more.
If I have a choice, I prefer physical books. If you’re on a budget, check out AbeBooks or ThriftBooks. I also use a Kindle every once in a while, even if there is a solid argument for avoiding Amazon. I’ve never really gotten into audiobooks.
Overall, I think the best format is whatever allows you to actually read. I’ve read on my phone during class and have even looked up older public-domain books as PDFs to read for free.
The Wise Man’s Fear in a single day during high school – a little over a thousand pages. This year, I also read Rage of Dragons and half of its sequel in the same evening (it was a late night).
It depends on the content. I’ve found my average pace is about a page per minute. Larger, wordier pages, typically in nonfiction, might slow me to half a page per minute. Shorter, easier reads can push closer to two pages per minute.
Generally, I’m not a huge fan. It takes a lot of artistry to make a book work on screen. It’s almost like translating a work: rooted in the original, but it becomes something new. It can definitely work – Game of Thrones and Lord of the Rings are great examples – but only because the creators adapted the story to fit what the medium.
I appreciate film – it’s a powerful art form – but I prefer keeping the characters and settings the way I imagine them.
I organize by genre – whether I’m in the mood for a cozy mystery or a travel story, I know exactly where to look. I also arrange books by size, tallest on the left to shortest on the right. Occasionally, for space and to break up the repetition, I’ll stack a few face-up.
Some people’s layout might be more aesthetic, but I like having as many books as I can to choose from, so long as it’s neat. You can find more ideas for organizing your bookshelf here.
