room for exchange

i nearly finished white nights on my flight home from spain to hamburg. but as we landed, i decided to save the last few pages for the next day at my favourite café in hamburg.

i picked up white nights because i wanted to get a better sense of dostoevsky without starting with one of his heavier novels.

it is short and easy to read, but it stays with you.

at its core, it is about a man falling in love with an idea of someone, rather than truly seeing the person in front of him.

the next day, i rode my vespa to café may. (if you ever find yourself in hamburg, it is one of my favourite places to sit for a few hours.)

the sun was out, so i sat outside and read the final pages.

when i closed the book, the man sitting next to me asked what i thought of it.

we ended up talking about books, ideas and the stories that stay with us long after the last page. he turned out to be a teacher who also studies philosophy at university, purely out of interest, which gave the conversation another dimension.

i find it remarkable how easily we can genuinely connect with people through a shared interest. not necessarily because we have the same opinions, but because we are curious about the same things.

when you read a book on your own, you form an idea of what it meant to you. but when you speak to someone who read the same pages differently, you have to explain your perspective. sometimes you have to defend it. and in doing so, you find out what you actually think.

some of the best conversations begin with a very simple question:

“what did you think of the book?”