Knowledge is King and they say extraordinary people seek knowledge, ordinary people seek experiences. I can’t quite remember where I first read that, but it has stuck with me through the years.
Think about people you’ve struck up interesting conversations with, for me these always tend to be those who are well-read, well-travelled, and have an open mind to culture and learning. Why not pamper yourself to some quiet down-time and indulge in the truly blissful experience of getting your nose deep into a hard-to-put-down book?
Here are some recommended reads from fellow bookworms:
The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch
The Last Lecture is a book written by the late Randy Pausch, a professor at Carnegie Mellon, who was diagnosed with terminal cancer and passed away in 2008. The book reiterates the idea of living life to the fullest in an extremely personal way, as the author takes readers into his life and shares his thoughts and feelings on dealing with his terminal diagnosis.
Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking by Susan Cain
The book presents a history of how Western culture transformed from a culture of character to a culture of personality in which an “extrovert ideal” dominates and introversion is viewed as inferior or even pathological. Adopting scientific definitions of introversion and extroversion as preferences for different levels of stimulation, Quiet outlines the advantages and disadvantages of each temperament, emphasizing the myth of the extrovert ideal that has dominated in the West since the early twentieth century.
A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki
A Tale for the Time Being is a novel by Ruth L. Ozeki narrated by two characters, a sixteen-year-old Japanese American girl in Tokyo who keeps a diary, and a Japanese American writer living on an island off British Columbia who finds the diary washed up on shore some time after the 2011 tsunami that devastated Japan.
All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr
It won the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the 2015 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction. Set in occupied France during World War II, the novel centers on a blind French girl and a German boy whose paths eventually cross.
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë
Jane Eyre follows the emotions and experiences of its title character, including her growth to adulthood and her love for Mr. Rochester, the Byronic master of fictitious Thornfield Hall. In its internalisation of the action—the focus is on the gradual unfolding of Jane’s moral and spiritual sensibility, and all the events are coloured by a heightened intensity that was previously the domain of poetry—Jane Eyre revolutionised the art of fiction.
The Glass Castle: A Memoir by Jeannette Walls
The book recounts the unconventional, poverty-stricken upbringing Walls and her siblings had at the hands of their deeply dysfunctional parents.
The memoir spent a total of 261 weeks on The New York Times Best Seller list and is now under development as a film by Paramount. By late 2007, The Glass Castle had sold over 2.7 million copies, had been translated into 22 languages, and received the Christopher Award, the American Library Association’s Alex Award (2006) and the Books for Better Living Award.
You can also check out this list of 58 books recommended by TED speakers if you’ve read all the books above.
