Searches by Vauhini Vara

I read Searches by Vauhini Vara. It’s one of my favorite books I’ve read in the past couple years. The book is both factually dense and beautiful, vulnerable. A book about the internet and feelings—that’s my kind of book. On dissonance, contradiction What I liked so much about this book is that she pokes at the cognitive dissonance and internal conflicts we can’t avoid in modern life. We have contradicting goals and beliefs and opinions. Like, you want to shop local for groceries but need to save money, and you want to buy books at the cute neighborhood bookstore but Amazon is so darn convenient and affordable, and you don’t want to eat animals but everyone is screaming at you to up your protein, and you walk to work to spare the greenhouse emissions but are flying to six weddings in other states this year. Et cetera. We couldn’t possibly ever logically defend all of our choices simultaneously. Our heads would explode. She interleaves her conflicting behavior so well. She’d covered a…