If I could buy you a book…
Warren Buffet reads 500 pages a day, Elon Musk learnt how to build rockets from reading and Mark Cuban reads for more than 3 hours a day. Ultra-successful people have this habit of reading a lot. (Donald Trump though 👀) Bill Gates is no different. He reads around 50 books a year, and will end up recommending his favourite ones which I suppose would always end up as a coveted stamp of approval for many authors resulting in a spike in sales.
Bill Gates released his summer reading recommendations a few weeks a go, I’ve already read one, Leonardo da Vinci by Walter Isaacson and will try to read the rest when I can. There is one book that Gates can’t get enough of, Factfulness by Hans Rosling.
I’ve been recommending this book since the day it came out.
Bill Gates has now put his money where his mouth is and has said he will give a copy of this book to every 2018 college graduate in the USA. As far as recommendations go this is a whopper. That’s 4 million copies. And I LOVE IT.
I read, not as much as Buffet et al. and I enjoy recommending books. Now I wish I could buy books that I really liked and give them out to friends, alas I can’t. Apologies. But I did spend a bit of time thinking about the books I would buy for people if I could!
First up is one of the most striking primers in Jewish thought I have ever read, Radical Then, Radical Now by Rabbi Jonathan Sacks.
He writes it as a wedding present for his son and ponders the question of what keeps us bound to the Jewish tradition that started at Sinai. This book was so striking because I felt that he expounds various ideas that we know to be true but aren’t really able to express. This is about Judaism but I feel that it would be of value to all religious people in the modern world. I firmly believe every child should be given this at their coming of age and I had the monies I’d probably strive to do such a thing.
My fiction pick is The Life of Pi by Yann Martel
I can’t believe how long it took me to get round to reading this, but when I did I read it in a day. Devoured it. Absorbed it. At one point I had to pinch myself to tell me that I wasn’t a true story, the book is so compelling. It addresses human potential, faith, religion, survival and many other themes and I’m sure it will strike different chords with different readers. I’m sure that if I were to read it now I’d find learn different lessons. Masterful.
I tend not to re-read books, there’s just too many I’ve not read that I don’t really want to spend time reading something again. I’ve definitely read Radical Then, Radical Now more than once and will continue reading it, and I think that’s one of the biggest stamps of approval for a book after buying it for someone else, the fact that with everything else on offer you want to spend time reading this one book again.
What books would you buy for people if you could? or what book can you just not get enough of?
