Writing my last column, I am filled with the same bittersweet feeling that strikes me when approaching the last few pages of a novel: an eagerness to conclude the story and begin another but also melancholy, knowing that I will never meet those characters in the same way. This column has truly shifted my identity as a reader by pushing me to interpret literature through both my personal and my generation’s experiences.

From Victorian rural England in Thomas Hardy’s “Far from the Madding Crowd” to the war-ridden Mediterranean islands in Joseph Heller’s “Catch-22,” it was challenging to relate such far-removed worlds to my own, yet equally fulfilling once I reached those “eureka” moments with a working idea. For me, the beauty of being a reader is making unexpected connections—like seeing traces of Han Kang’s “The Vegetarian” in Julio Cortazar’s “Axolotl”—and appreciating how literature transcends time and space.

In the spirit of Newspeak in George Orwell’s “1984,” if I had to summarize what reading means to me, I would describe it as my connector: to people, culture, physical spaces, family, other novels, and those inexpressible human experiences that only literature can voice. Since my childhood in Istanbul, I have been my friends’ go-to for book loans and recommendations—my “Harry Potter” editions served the imagination of many third graders awaiting their Hogwarts letters. As I grew older, one of my most cherished memories became visiting the Museum of Innocence, built after Orhan Pamuk’s novel, with my mom. Other times, she and I took the Bosphorus ferry to forage the second-hand bookstores lining Kadikoy’s hidden street passages.

Literature connected me to the world around me, and, in turn, that world inspired my reading. Even on my everyday commute to school, I drove by Ottoman mosques next to ragged, pastel-colored apartments or Roman aqueducts beside chaotic Turkish bazaars. This urban mosaic acted as a catalyst for my literary imagination, spanning from the multiverse of “Lord of the Rings” to the city of Cittàgazze in Philip Pullman’s “The Subtle Knife.” I felt like my surroundings were an extension of these fictional worlds. With its rich history and culture, the city filled me with the same thrill as the mythical creatures or magical realities in my favorite fantasy novels. So this is how my journey as a reader culminated: an inherent fusion of my physical and fantastical worlds.

Reading was also my vehicle for inciting new relationships. During my freshman year of high school, I ventured into various clubs and projects with a juvenile ambition to discover my “purpose” in life—little did I know it was not in the Space Settlement Design Club. The extracurricular spaces that did stick with me were led by the same group of upperclassmen, whom I deeply admired. One of them, named Demir, mentioned that he was searching for a copy of Haruki Murakami’s “Kafka on the Shore”—the story of 15-year-old Kafka Tamura running away from his Oedipal curse and an idiosyncratic elderly man named Nakata who communicates with cats. I immediately sprung to the occasion and told him I could lend him my copy. As ideal as it seems now, I faced a slight setback: I did not own such a copy, nor had I ever heard of the author. I scrambled to the bookstore after school, bought the novel, and promptly presented it to Demir the next day. After reading “Kafka on the Shore” and others, Murakami is one of my favorite authors to this day.