Books: Sapiens.

I won’t lie. Reading isn’t something that I have always enjoyed. During the quiet times in literacy lessons designated to read and review books, I would often find myself daydreaming, pretending that I was the Queen of a foreign land who rode dinosaurs as a means to get around. It wasn’t until a lot later in life that I took a fondness to books and started catapulting myself into the worlds that others created.

I read books to learn, to escape, to nourish and to educate and soon enough, there were times when I preferred the company of my favourite author as opposed to my favourite friend (even though at the time I thought that the two were the same thing).

During these present times however, I have much more of a balance with regards to my social life, but there are still times when I obsess over books and find myself unwilling and unable to detach myself from them even when they are over.

My current obsession began yesterday as I started to read the book “Sapiens. A brief History of Humankind” as it had caught my attention on my Dad’s bookshelf. I was initially drawn to it as a few days prior I had seen someone else reading it on my plane journey back from Italy and their engrossment in it sparked my intrigue.

As of yet, I have only managed to devour around 80 pages (largely due to the issues of getting side tracked with various duties that life entertains us with) but so far, with regards to the words that I have read, I am enjoying it.

The author details the theory of human evolution through the survival and extinction of other species, where the Homo Sapien (wise man) has risen to be the victor. He portrays the idea of idealised realities, a mental construct that we have created in order to make the surrounding world work for us in order to help solidify and validate our dominance within the animal kingdom.

I still have so much more to read as I am only 1/5 of the way through, but I thoroughly enjoy the rhetoric that Harari has used in his description of humans. He does not describe us as perfect celestial beings but instead, quite the opposite. We are inherently flawed, which some might view as a detriment, but it is through these flaws that we have been able to survive.

I can’t wait to read on and watch the rest of the words melt into my memory.

Nikki x