Our first returning Lattes with Ladies guest: Jessie Ho! I first interviewed Jessie in 2017 while she was living in Hong Kong. We regrouped in March of this year—literally days before quarantine began—and it was fun to revisit what was going through our minds back then. You can follow her on Instagram at @iejessie or on her bookstagram account, @jesscanread.png.
HPL: First off, what are you reading right now?
JH: I’m currently reading a stack of books. I have a stack of books on my desk that I am starting to read slowly. One of them is Trick Mirror by Jia Tolentino but I don’t feel as much pressure to finish it in one go since the book is a bunch of essays. I’ll go through it slowly. I don’t know if you’ve seen it on Instagram, but ironically, it’s a book about technology but in the context of doing nothing? It’s actually called How to Do Nothing by Jenny Odell and is about the attention economy. So the premise is we spend so much time looking through social media and looking for the next photo or the next like that we don’t actually know how to stop anymore. Also reading Murakami’s Norwegian Wood. I haven’t actually read it before but I’m a little bit leery of Murakami because I feel like he is often used as a blanket for all translated Japanese literature. I’m not saying he’s not a great writer and he’s definitely done great things for the genre but I’d like to read more Japanese literature by a woman or more modern [writer] or whatever. Especially because the women in his books generally don’t end up in great situations. They usually end up raped or killed. They are basically tools to advance the plot for the man in the story, so I feel a bit “mmm” about reading it but I also feel that there are certain books that you need to read before you critique it because they have become so cultural. It’s not a bad read so far though! I’m trying not to read too deeply into it for now. You know how sometimes you read a book through the lens of an English major and you think, ‘Ah, this is a symbolism for this’ or ‘You can use this theory here’. In this case, I’ve told myself “Okay, I’m just going to read this for entertainment.” I’m rereading Good Omens too but that one I’ve kind of stopped. There’s just so many books I’m reading but haven’t finished but also so many other things to do during the day! It’s also one of my goals to read more this year, so this has been a good reminder of what I need to get back to, haha.
HPL: When you stop reading a book, is it because you’re bored with it or you don’t like it? Do you actually want to finish them or just feel that you have to finish these books?
JH: Yeah, I genuinely want to! Because to me, what’s the point of having them if I haven’t read them? But I do have a lot of books on my bookshelf that I haven’t read. And I think that part of it is a low attention span thing. There are times when I’m reading and I want to stop and take a break, and it’s just so hard to get back into it after a while. On the other hand, if you’re watching a show you can just pause and rewind it. It’s harder with reading because it is all happening in your head and you have to do the work inside your brain so it’s more of an interruption to the process. Whereas with watching a show, you can just pause and resume it. I don’t know that this is necessarily true because I am still reading, but it’s hard to find long periods in the day to read uninterrupted. Going back to Odell’s book!
That’s why I really like fantasy series, like a young adult series with fantasy plots about kingdoms. And that—I think it was last year or the year before—that, I literally could not stop reading. I bought the first book and second book on e-reader and then another one I read standing in Chapters. I basically read through this whole book while still in the bookstore because I was so into that book for some reason. Again, I can read a lot faster if I’m also not paying so much attention to the symbolism in the book. The story is just moved by the plot and I focus on, “I wanna know what happens next” or “What’s going to happen to this character?” and so on.
HPL: Do you read young adult fiction frequently then?
JH: Hmm, not frequently. That series was the last I remember and I definitely read it last year. I think of it like a—I don’t want to say guilty pleasure… When you’re reading these books as a teen, for example, you may put yourself in another person’s shoes because you’re 18 or maybe pushing 20 and so are the characters. Whereas reading it now, I don’t anymore. It’s just a different form of escapism, which I really enjoy. Actually, do you know Eva Chen from Instagram? She has a bunch of different partnerships and she’s the one who actually recommended it on her stories. When I saw that I was like, “Oh, okay. Maybe.” I mean, she is a well-respected fashion blogger and if she can like it so can I, right? I feel like she opened it up to a lot more people to enjoy it since it’s kind of a teeny-bopper read.
HPL: I do feel like young adult fiction gets a really bad rap for being less legitimate. Especially if you were an English major because it’s not “literature”.
JH: But it’s also that kind of book that I feel like I wouldn’t get into otherwise! I believe that is partly why I enjoy reading them. I have been rekindling the love of reading through YA novels because I was a really, really avid reader as a kid. And through them, I feel that way again versus as an English major.
HPL: So you now live in Toronto, before that you lived in Hong Kong. Have you noticed that the types of books you are reading have changed a lot depending on what city you’re living in?
JH: Yeah! After I came back to Canada, before I moved to Toronto, I was living in my childhood bedroom where I had all my books. So I started rereading a lot of my childhood books. As I started moving to Toronto, I feel like I was more into all the books that are hot right now. All the books on lists of, ‘You should read’ or on other people’s feeds. A little bit, in it for the clout, almost? I mean reading is reading, and whatever, I’ll read what I want, but there are certain books that you want to say you have read. All the books that people are talking about right now. For example, Trick Mirror is one of those. I feel like it was just so successful over last summer. [Jia Tolentino] was everywhere! Everyone was reading her book and everyone was talking about it on Instagram, or they were attending an event she was at. Because I am on social media all the time, especially Instagram. And I feel like that book spoke to that specific audience too because it’s about women in the social media age and they all were saying, “I love it! Isn’t it so funny that we’re all on social media talking about this book talking about ourselves, blah, blah, blah, blah.” So yeah, I definitely feel like that was a product of me being on social media and moving to the city.
In Hong Kong, my reading was all over the place but I was very careful about not buying too many books so I used an e-reader, because the place I was living was kind of cramped so I couldn’t put them anywhere, and because books over there tend to end up… mouldy? Not like that… but they wear out more quickly because of the temperature? They don’t mould specifically. I also read a lot of more businessy books back then too. What’s his face? Malcolm Gladwell. I read that. In Hong Kong, I was in kind of a weird time where I was trying to figure out my career; that early-career phase where I was trying to figure out where I was headed by reading those types of books. It was also a time when I realized how important it was to me to have books if I like them. So, when I came back to Canada I actually bought physical copies of it. Well, I also felt like those were books I would buy because I thought, “Oh I should buy this book because it will help me in some way.” Even though I’d buy it, they’re not really the kind of book you’d read for fun? When I was a kid I would read just for fun, and then, in school and university, you would read because of school. And now, you have to read half to learn something and the other half is to enjoy it. Reading is obviously good for you but it’s more like you read for a purpose.
HPL: That’s interesting, so you differentiate between reading for fun and reading for purpose?
JH: There’s definitely something about documenting your reading for appearances on social media but you’re also trying to better yourself and to better your mind. I mean, we’re always on this trend of social movement and social growth. Maybe that’s why when reading for fun, you can feel a bit of conflict about it at the same time. You know how when people say “self-care is an act of defiance”? It feels a little bit like that but I kind of hesitate to use that label because that also has been co-opted.
HPL: Yeah, the whole self-care market is, well, a market.
JH: I hate that too. I hate that it’s a market. It’s made for people to make money off of. Like you can’t afford to love yourself if you can’t buy their stuff. I mean that has also happened to the reading market to some extent. In the way that the kind of books you own say something to other people. And libraries still exist and other services like that where you can borrow it if you don’t want to buy the book, but nobody talks about it on [Instagram] anymore. It’s always, “buy the book”. And I get it, with book sales for an author you can only make so much money. Even bookstagram, so many people have made it a business to review books and you can, but they always say, “buy the book.” And then the successful bloggers turn around and say, “I wrote a book!”
HPL: You’re right, sometimes I forget that books are physical. Even e-books. Books are an object.
JH: Yeah, and they’re a status symbol, even today. If you walk into someone’s house, you look at their books and see that they are readers. If they have a ton of them, you know they’re loaded. You have to have a lot of physical space to have a library. Like look at Toronto, no one has that without having wealth. The only way to have a personal library is to have a big house in the countryside. I feel like, in some ways, reading is tied to social class. You also have to have the time to read or the lifestyle that you can afford leisure time, plus buying all of those books.
HPL: Can you afford to be a reader? That’s a great question.
JH: I mean here we are in a coffee shop talking about books. Fine, we bought our own coffees and we may or may not have bought copies of a certain book. There’s something that bothers me about the fact that we have to pay to read and pay to talk about the books we read. I don’t know what the alternative is.
HPL: I’m sure we could find a book about it.
JH: Oh yeah, I’m sure. Probably a million books about it! You know, honestly, in some ways, I don’t get why people are publishing books so much anymore when we have social media. Take beauty gurus, for example. They have all these blogs and these videos on their website and then they take all that content and put it into a book. I don’t understand. Especially for a book based solely on their social media. I mean that sort of content actually translates better as a video where you can watch the steps. With that as an alternative, you’re not going to want to see step-by-step photos in a book. I’m all for people going back to [print] at a certain point with technology always being there but if it’s just taking social media posts and putting it into a book, and that’s it, then all you want is more money. You’re not even putting value out into the world. There’s already a lot of junk and you’re just creating more of it. I love books, I feel like they can be so great but when they’re done like that, I just don’t get it. That’s just about making money…
I also feel that while you are reading, you’re not being productive in the way that capitalist society tells you is productive, which is making money. I mean, aside from the person who published the book as we said. But you’re not doing something for somebody else which they can profit from, when you’re reading you are doing something for yourself. I mean it’s different. I feel that reading is also socially productive to a certain degree, in terms of your whole self. It’s not just something you do for your mental health but reading is also political.
HPL: Do you feel like the perspective you have of books now and how they feed into capitalism comes up more because you work in marketing?
JH: In terms of the whole capitalist thing, it is something that I think more of now that I’m working. I’m a contributing member of society, but also now that I’m older I’m just more self-aware of systems like capitalism, racism, the patriarchy, etc. etc. I still value reading. To me, it’s intrinsically valuable, but now I can read for a purpose other than just for fun. Even though that’s important too! No matter what [genre] it is. But I’m also better able to be a better person for society. I kind of hesitate to say it, but I’m not only getting better for myself but also for the sake of everyone. That must make me sound pretentious, haha. I don’t mean read just for the better of society but I think a byproduct of that is if you’re a more self-actualized person then you’re more self-aware, and you’re better able to navigate the people around you. More people should read!