Reading

Leaders must be Readers – a saying I read somewhere and couldn’t agree more. But reading to me is a must for just about anyone and everyone, at any level or in any walk of life. I have been, more or less, an avid reader all my life and till date books continue to be my best companions.

Reading books, is a habit I have always strongly advocated, be it in children I come across (including my own child), in management students I get a chance to interact with, or in my own professional circle and team.

To me books can give you a very comprehensive learning, besides the patience and calmness it instils in you.

Having said this, I think I’d also like to warn readers against excessive reading. Reading something not suited to your age or without proper digestion and assimilation may cause severe indigestion of the mind, and one may end up sounding like a facts vending machine rather than someone who’s an interesting conversationalist with his/her own opinion.

I’m sure we’ve come across many well-read people and seen the difference between ones whom we easily end up labelling as “all bookish”, “pseudo-intellectual” and simply “well-read and knowledgeable”. The ones falling in the last category are the ones who really assimilate what they read, contemplate and relate it to their own life experiences and observations, and churn the whole knowledge to create wisdom, in other words, grow and become wiser.

Avid readers can choose to pick up and read just any good book as per mood and availability, however, ones new to reading should make their first few selections very wisely and carefully, so that a book doesn’t end up making you averse to the wonderful habit of reading!

And yes, let me also add here, that you will utmost enjoy when, while reading different genres, you break all barriers, simply to say you may learn a lot of management from history books, a lot about science from spiritual books, quite a lot of spirituality from simple classics and so on! So go ahead and pick up a book with an open mind and enjoy!

There are myriad lists of books available on the Internet based on genres, publishers, age, etc. etc. However, for the interested ones, I share a humble and short list of few of my own best picks that are fresh in my current memory :)

Listed randomly and from mix of genre:

1.    Rumi’s Poetry

2.    Finding the Joy Within You by Sri Sri Daya Mata

3.    To kill a Mocking Bird by Harper Lee

4.    Freedom at Midnight by Dominique Lapierre and Larry Collins

5.    My experiments with Truth By M.K. Gandhi

6.    God Talks With Arjun by Paramhansa Yogananda

7.    Autobiography of a Yogi by Paramhansa Yogananda

8.    The Secret by Rhonda Byrne

9.    The Kalam Effect by P. M. Nair

10. How Google Works By Eric Schmidt and Jonathan Rosenberg

11. Good to Great by Jim Collins

12. Who says Elephants can’t dance? By Louis Gerstner

13. The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran

14. The Road Less Travelled by M. Scott Peck

15. The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey

16. The Light of Asia by Sir Edwin Arnold

17. Complete works of Swami Vivekanand

18. Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson

19. Gitanjali and many short stories by Rabindranath Tagore

20. Ruskin Bond’s novels and stories

21. My India by Jim Corbett

I’ll appreciate your comments and sharing of your best picks!