I recently read an article that at first glance feels pretentious. It links to the Mensa Reading List for grades 9-12, and when you take a look at that list and try to imagine the average high school student picking up even one of the books on this list, you might start to roll your eyes. But as I read further, the article makes a compelling case that the list is important for how it challenges young minds to think critically.

I realize that Mensa-level reading isn’t about elitism; it’s about stamina. About learning to sit with a thing you don’t yet understand, and may not even like, and figuring out why it matters anyway.

When I stopped to look at the list, I realized I had read many of the books on the list, and I had read them in high school. And by many, I mean 15-20%. Some of the books I read for fun and some were high school requirements. I want to split those two categories and discuss them each individually.

Reading for fun

This is a bit of a misnomer. For me, I read for fun because my step mom forced me to. Which, by definition, means it wasn’t fun. At least, not initially. Every summer, when my sister and I would visit my dad and step mom, we were stripped of three things:

1. Our friends
2. Television
3. Video games

Much of the summer days were spent with my dad sleeping because of the shift work he had. So, my sister and I not only had the common entertainment outlets we were used to throughout the rest of the year and needed to entertain ourselves in different ways, we also had to do this while being incredibly quiet all day.

(Quick aside: To this day, it bothers me when someone closes a door without turning the handle first. If you’ve never grown up needing to be quiet, you are probably unnecessarily loud in your daily life.)

When our step mom worked, which was off and on over the years, my sister and I would sneak some television in. We’d pull out the Game Boy my dad kept in the side table in the living room. But by and large, those were not options. So, we read.

Our step mom encouraged (read: forced) reading and reading comprehension. She would make us write short book reports on the books we read. She would take us to the library and Barnes and Noble. When Amazon became popular, there would be a constant stream of book deliveries every summer.

It was in these summers that I discovered Stephen King and Jack London. It’s where I read The Red Badge of Courage and Treasure Island. I also discovered comic books during these summers. My step mom would take us to the antique shops all around San Diego County, and many of these shops had old comic books. Nothing super valuable. Just some dollar copies of old comics that I would buy or she would buy for me. This was an allowable form of reading during those summers, and because of that, I was exposed to a different style of prose and reading.

I was able to read Christine before I should have been based on my age. I read violent things and sexual things and had relatively unfiltered access to words that sparked conversations and questions. Outside of being forced to read in the first place, this is the biggest ingredient to my love of reading. I was not censored and could explore. I’ve carried this on with my own children allowing them to read well beyond their grade levels.

All of this reading for fun could have had an adverse affect on me in high school if my curriculum was behind my own level of reading. Fortunately, that wasn’t the case.

Reading in high school

I went to public high school in Arizona. I’m not sure what the rankings looked like in the 90s and early 2000s, but if you look now, you’ll see Arizona ranks poorly in public education.

So, it would be be easy to assume that when it comes to literary education in high school, Arizona would also rank poorly. And it probably does. Maybe I got lucky, but my high school experience was filled with reading some of the greatest pieces of literature, including many of the works appearing on the Mensa List.

In high school, I read Beowulf. I read The Illiad and The Odyssey. I read John Updike and Shakespeare. I read the first poem that ever made me stand up and take notice of the form—Dylan Thomas’s Do not go gentle into that good night. I was then exposed to Robert Frost and Langston Hughes and Edgar Allan Poe.

This all spanned across the entirety of my four years of high school, but I had one teach in particular that probably expanded my reading experience more than anyone else. Mr. Wetzel didn’t just teach us literature, he allowed us to experience it. When we read something and the term or concept was new, he explained it with pageantry. He acted out the use of a main gauche when we were reading La Main Gauche by Guy de Maupassant. He taught us what a pommel horse was when we read a story that mentioned it (can’t remember what the story was, unfortunately) by climbing onto his desk and pretending to swoop and swing like an olympian.

It was in that class where I read Macbeth for the first time. It’s where I read The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings trilogy. It’s where I read Cyrano de Bergerac, a play that expanded my mind so much that I can see its influence everywhere from modern film and television to modern novels.

I don’t remember if my classmates got as much out of high school literature as I did. I don’t know if my memories have altered themselves as memories do and tinted the experience in a brighter hue. But I know the things I read in high school cemented the joy of reading in me for life.

Wildly reading widely

Perhaps—likely _because_—of my experience, I read anything and everything today. I read fiction and non-fiction. Graphic novels and audio books. I read on Kindle and I read paperbacks. My desk at any given time is littered with multiple in-progress books.

It’s not uncommon in tech circles to see people reading. Many people in tech are well-educated, and with that education comes a love (or at least a drive) of reading. Yet, many skip reading fiction. Non-fiction is important. In the picture above, you can see four non-fiction books clearly visible. Those books’s publication dates span every decade from the 1960s through the 1990s. But mixed in there are novels.

I don’t think anyone would debate the impact of science fiction novels on the way humans perceive the world. Ask anyone who has read 1984 or Brave New World how those books shape their feelings toward government and technology and you’ll surely get clearly formed answers. But science fiction is not the only form of fiction that expands the mind, unlocks creativity, and helps one think.

Romance and crime and literary works all do this. A “beach read” can stimulate the mind and lead toward a widening of understanding as well as the classics if you allow it to.

Fiction is the counter-balance to non-fiction. When you combine them, your worldview changes drastically. Your ability to process events and information changes drastically. So, when I say read wildly, I mean read as many books as you can (multiple at one time if your brain allows for that). Read across genres. Read poetry and comics. Read non-fiction and essays. Read the classics, then pick up something off of Reese’s Book List.

As we march forward in a world with decreasing attention spans and an addiction to video over text, and as we march into an unknown future both inhibited by and unlocked by artificial intelligence, books remain humanity’s greatest tool for mental freedom and creativity. I’m glad I experienced them the way I did growing up, and even if your experience is different, you can still grow your awareness, understanding, and empathy through books by reading at whatever pace suits you.

But read widely. And go wild.