Reading is one of the most important activities anyone can do. I genuinely believe this. Active immersion into a good book defines and sculpts your mental landscape lie no other way and is something I am constantly striving to do more of.
The ability to visualise, imagine, create and subsequently tell a story yourself, elucidate your thoughts and describe to others with clarity and panache are skills that are an important part of the 21st Century workplace. Everybody has a story to tell, especially when, say, reporting to your manager, selling a product, pitching an idea or working in a team. Your ability to get your story across can be the difference between success and failure, between hopping up the career ladder and sliding down the career snake.
With this in mind, I am in the process of drawing myself up a 2014 Reading Bucket List. Here are the titles on my list??see if you agree or think I should add any more.
1) The Catcher in the Rye??JD Salinger. READ
2) A TAle of Two Cities??Charles Dickins READ
3) Pharos??Adrian Addams
4) The Communists Manifesto??Karl Marx READ
5) Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance??Robert Pirsig READ
6) Les Miserables??Victor Hugo
7) Benjamin Franklins Auto-Biography
8) 1984??George Orwell
9) The Life of Pi??Yann Martel
10) Of Mice and Men??John Steinbeck
Some of these books represent a course in GCSE English! I read Harper Lees fantastic To Kill a Mockingbird, so missed out on the Steinbecks and Orwells of this world??I will have to make up for it now.
This group of books, I feel, contain a good degree of diversity, topic matter and cultural impact??a good list to see me through 2014. What do you think? Any glaring omissions? What do you have on your reading bucket list? Send us a tweet @kloodleuk!
