Scanning through my Kindle to remind myself of the large number of books I have read over the last two years or thereabouts two things struck me:
- The subject matter of these books ranges extensively, from marketing to business to Jane Austen to Charles Dickens to Gogol to Dostoevsky and Tolstoy to Raymond Chandler and Agatha Christie and Sherlock Holmes and Ross McDonald, to self help and mind management and philosophy and law and social media and video marketing to world war two, to productivity and stress and time management;
- The quality and worth oscillates widely.
The question popped into my head as to what books I would recommend to my children, given that I strongly believe it is a good thing that they develop a reading habit, something that is under increasing pressure from other attention grabbing distractions in society.
I could give them a huge list but will confine my choice to five books and will recognise the need to strike a balance between encouraging the habit of reading, by picking books that are accessible and easy to digest, and quality books-that is, authors that might on first reading be difficult going but like any acquired taste prove to be invaluable and be from authors to whom they will return again and again over the course of a lifetime.
I will also include a non fiction or two which should help them through life by giving them tools for dealing with the stresses of life as they occur.
So, come back tomorrow for the list which is deserving of its own blog post.
Here is the first book on the list.
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