The act of reading books is something people are doing less and less in our world of smartphones, social media and twenty-four-hour news cycles. If, however, you are curious about the world, and if, perhaps, you also would like to have more knowledge and understanding of our world than others, then reading books is a simple “hack” for any of us.
There are simply so many books out there one can read on any topic. In fact, one of the reasons I started this blog over 2,000 posts ago was that I would often listen to clients or others I met, then say “Have you read this book?”, to which the answer was often along the lines of “no, I haven’t got time to read that many books”, so I would then firs tell them the core points of the book, then go home and write a blog post about the core topics in the book to share with others and add to my library of shared learnings online.
With that, one thought for you today (other than “read more books”!) is, rather than reading book after book, sometimes choose to read a great book twice.
The list of great books I have read twice is long, so today I will give you some that I have read more than twice, some as many as ten or more times. Oh, and for each of these, I include a link to a blog post I wrote around the book. For some of these, if you search my site for the author’s name, you will see I have written about their writing and thoughts multiple times.
- The Alchemist by Paolo Coelho. I used to make a point of reading this short book once every year, as I would take new learnings from it each year as I moved along this journey we call life.
- Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl. I have recommended this book to others more than any other book I have read, it forms the bedrock of so much of my philosophies on life.
- How to Stop Time by Matt Haig. I am a romantic (idealist) in my soul. I am also a romantic when it comes to love stories and life stories, so this one is an absolute favourite, with some beautifully simple lyrical prose.
- The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. Beautiful, Simply beautiful, plus I often read it (in French) before I visit France to brush the rust off my language skills!
- The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz. Four simple lessons to guide you in how you lead yourself and others through any tough times.
- 100 Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Magical Realism extraordinaire! My blog post around this is about beauty, romanticism and magical realism.