Book Review: Two Pro-Introvert Books
Introverts of the world...uh, don't unite, that might be a bit strong. But smile happily knowing that you're not crazy!
I've been going through a very introvert-affirming time right now. When I was younger, it made me wretched that I was unable to handle crowds and social situations compared to other people. Shopping trips with my mother always left me limp and begging for a break two hours in; at college I stopped going to parties altogether when a friend told me she couldn't enjoy herself because I wasn't getting wasted and being noisy; here in Japan people usually assume my Japanese is poor because I'm paralyzed with fright at the idea of speaking up in meetings. I went through a lot of time thinking there was something really wrong with me, and it's only pretty recently that I've started to say "No, wait...that I get overwhelmed easily doesn't mean that I don't like people, or even that I'm shy--it's just the way I am. And it's not even a bad way."
A couple of books I've read recently on the topic and would recommend highly to other introverts:
The Introvert Advantage: How to Thrive in an Extrovert World by Marti Olsen Laney. This is a fantastic primer on embracing your introversion. It's full of insights that made me laugh and recognize myself--for example, the observation that some introvert children will deliberately misbehave to get some quiet time. When I learned that if I didn't do my in-class work I would be rewarded by getting to stay in at recess rather than going out and playing "Red Rover, Red Rover" (*shudder*)...I became the slowest worker in second grade.
Laney does a great job of celebrating introvertedness while at the same time giving hints and tips on how to--not become more extroverted, but to function better among extroverts. Ways to set limits and read your "personal energy meter" so you don't overload are really helpful, and she gives some good strategies for dealing with parties and other social situations. There are also good chapters on dating and marriage, parenting, and being introverted in the workplace.
One of the strengths of Laney's book is that it's not judgmental in either direction, although it's very reassuring. It doesn't criticize extroversion, it just supports introversion. This is lovely, but...if you're in the mood for some plain old fist-pumping "Introverts Rock!" I would recommend Anneli Rufus's Party of One: The Loner's Manifesto. It's a great pep talk--and she references Batman as a
loner no less than five times, and Superman once. *grins* In fact, she has a section about how comic-book heroes tend to be loners that made me wonder if maybe introverts tend to be drawn to superhero fandom. It's not a book filled with practical advice, but with paragraphs like this:
Loners, if you can catch them, are well worth the trouble. Not dulled by excess human contact, not blase or focused on your crotch while jabbering about themselves, loners are curious, vigilant, and full of surprises. They do not cling. Separate wherever they go, awake or asleep, they shimmer with the iridescence of hidden things seldom seen. The pearl, the swallow's egg, the lost doubloon, the jewel in the lotus, membrane. You don't need to be told this. You know.
I actually got about as much insight into Bruce's character as my own reading this book. :) Or while talking about friendship, in a chapter wonderfully titled "I Have to Go Now":
We care. We feel. We think. We do not always miss the absent one. We cannot always come when called. Being friends with a loner requires patience and the wisdom that distance does not mean dislike.
And in a chapter on loner/loner marriages:
That even die-hard loners might let someone else in, someone, just one but all the way in, simply messes up the stereotype. . . .It has been said before, let's say it again: "loner" is not a synonym for "misanthrope." Not is it one for "hermit," "celibate," or "outcast." It's just that we are selective. Verrry selective.
I was struck, reading her discussion on marriage, how in some very meaningful ways I've modeled the Clark/Bruce relationship in Music of the Spheres on my own marriage. Not in the sense that we're crime-fighting superheroes, but in the sense that we have let just one person in, but all the way in, that it's the two of us against the world, the only two who understand each other. There's a lot of space and silence in Clark and Bruce's relationship, which co-exists paradoxically with a nearly constant sense of togetherness. When I'm writing in the bedroom for hours and Dan's playing Wii games in the living room with his laptop nearby so I can send him a chat message ("I miss you. I'll be down as soon as I finish this scene." "*hugs* Hope it's going well.") and we're both perfectly content, that's the space I write a "married" Clark and Bruce from.
Which got off-topic a bit, but everything comes back to writing, somehow. :) Anyway, when you need someone to say to you, "Being an introvert is not only 'all right,' it's valuable and special and meaningful," this is a good book for you.
I'll close with a quote by Ursula LeGuin, in the forword to The Birthday of the World and Other Stories:
Hardly anybody ever writes anything nice about introverts. Extraverts rule. This is really rather odd when you realise that about nineteen writers out of twenty are introverts.
We have been taught to be ashamed of not being "outgoing." But a writer's job is ingoing.
I've been going through a very introvert-affirming time right now. When I was younger, it made me wretched that I was unable to handle crowds and social situations compared to other people. Shopping trips with my mother always left me limp and begging for a break two hours in; at college I stopped going to parties altogether when a friend told me she couldn't enjoy herself because I wasn't getting wasted and being noisy; here in Japan people usually assume my Japanese is poor because I'm paralyzed with fright at the idea of speaking up in meetings. I went through a lot of time thinking there was something really wrong with me, and it's only pretty recently that I've started to say "No, wait...that I get overwhelmed easily doesn't mean that I don't like people, or even that I'm shy--it's just the way I am. And it's not even a bad way."
A couple of books I've read recently on the topic and would recommend highly to other introverts:
The Introvert Advantage: How to Thrive in an Extrovert World by Marti Olsen Laney. This is a fantastic primer on embracing your introversion. It's full of insights that made me laugh and recognize myself--for example, the observation that some introvert children will deliberately misbehave to get some quiet time. When I learned that if I didn't do my in-class work I would be rewarded by getting to stay in at recess rather than going out and playing "Red Rover, Red Rover" (*shudder*)...I became the slowest worker in second grade.
Laney does a great job of celebrating introvertedness while at the same time giving hints and tips on how to--not become more extroverted, but to function better among extroverts. Ways to set limits and read your "personal energy meter" so you don't overload are really helpful, and she gives some good strategies for dealing with parties and other social situations. There are also good chapters on dating and marriage, parenting, and being introverted in the workplace.
One of the strengths of Laney's book is that it's not judgmental in either direction, although it's very reassuring. It doesn't criticize extroversion, it just supports introversion. This is lovely, but...if you're in the mood for some plain old fist-pumping "Introverts Rock!" I would recommend Anneli Rufus's Party of One: The Loner's Manifesto. It's a great pep talk--and she references Batman as a
loner no less than five times, and Superman once. *grins* In fact, she has a section about how comic-book heroes tend to be loners that made me wonder if maybe introverts tend to be drawn to superhero fandom. It's not a book filled with practical advice, but with paragraphs like this:
Loners, if you can catch them, are well worth the trouble. Not dulled by excess human contact, not blase or focused on your crotch while jabbering about themselves, loners are curious, vigilant, and full of surprises. They do not cling. Separate wherever they go, awake or asleep, they shimmer with the iridescence of hidden things seldom seen. The pearl, the swallow's egg, the lost doubloon, the jewel in the lotus, membrane. You don't need to be told this. You know.
I actually got about as much insight into Bruce's character as my own reading this book. :) Or while talking about friendship, in a chapter wonderfully titled "I Have to Go Now":
We care. We feel. We think. We do not always miss the absent one. We cannot always come when called. Being friends with a loner requires patience and the wisdom that distance does not mean dislike.
And in a chapter on loner/loner marriages:
That even die-hard loners might let someone else in, someone, just one but all the way in, simply messes up the stereotype. . . .It has been said before, let's say it again: "loner" is not a synonym for "misanthrope." Not is it one for "hermit," "celibate," or "outcast." It's just that we are selective. Verrry selective.
I was struck, reading her discussion on marriage, how in some very meaningful ways I've modeled the Clark/Bruce relationship in Music of the Spheres on my own marriage. Not in the sense that we're crime-fighting superheroes, but in the sense that we have let just one person in, but all the way in, that it's the two of us against the world, the only two who understand each other. There's a lot of space and silence in Clark and Bruce's relationship, which co-exists paradoxically with a nearly constant sense of togetherness. When I'm writing in the bedroom for hours and Dan's playing Wii games in the living room with his laptop nearby so I can send him a chat message ("I miss you. I'll be down as soon as I finish this scene." "*hugs* Hope it's going well.") and we're both perfectly content, that's the space I write a "married" Clark and Bruce from.
Which got off-topic a bit, but everything comes back to writing, somehow. :) Anyway, when you need someone to say to you, "Being an introvert is not only 'all right,' it's valuable and special and meaningful," this is a good book for you.
I'll close with a quote by Ursula LeGuin, in the forword to The Birthday of the World and Other Stories:
Hardly anybody ever writes anything nice about introverts. Extraverts rule. This is really rather odd when you realise that about nineteen writers out of twenty are introverts.
We have been taught to be ashamed of not being "outgoing." But a writer's job is ingoing.