It’s the last class of the semester. Twice a week for the past three months, the Storytelling in Business students and I have spent eighty minutes having lively discussions about character archetypes, the hero’s journey, brand stories, data storytelling, and even science fiction.
Each student has written a biography describing their obstacles and triumphs, as well as the people and places in their lives. Reading their intense and heartfelt autobiographies made me smile, laugh out loud, and cry.
Today, I give them back their manuscripts with grades (numerical grades are the way things are, especially in the B-school world). I have a number of awards for best memoirs and of course best books too. This is a book list I’ve been thinking about for a long time – what books would readers in their twenties enjoy and find inspiring?
Dear readers, if you are in your twenties or have colleagues, friends and relatives in their twenties, what are your favorite books? Write us your recommendations. Here is my list of eight books:
Price book 1 of 8: The artist’s path by Julia Cameron: If you are a writer suffering from writer’s block or any other creative person, this book is the magic potion that will save you. Spend an hour a day for eight weeks doing the exercises described in the book. You will be amazed by the results. This book is for a brilliant writer, a student who would like to be a novelist by night.
Price book 2 of 8: Stories I have to tell by Kabir Bedi: This gripping novel has something for everyone: music, theatre, film, spirituality, tragedy and love. Freda Bedi, the British-born mother of actor Kabir Bedi, fought alongside her Sikh husband for India’s independence and even went to prison for it. Her story is in this book. Bedi’s writing is engaging and open. This book is for an award-winning student who wrote his story in a similar episodic style.
Price book 3 of 8: The Covenant of Water by Abraham Verghese: From Obama to Oprah, this book was on every best-seller list last year, and rightly so. The lush descriptions of the Kerala countryside and the colonial city of Madras come alive in this family saga that spans from the early 1900s to post-Independence. It’s for a student who shares the same geography as the books, and I hope she will enjoy it.
Price book 4 of 8: Courage to drive by Manal Al-Sharif: A gripping story about a woman’s fight for the right to drive in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The story follows Al-Sharif as she grows up in the holy city of Mecca, studies computer programming, and gets a job at the American multinational Aramco. It is fascinating and educational to see her create a movement using a carefully thought-out strategy and physical and virtual networks.
Price book 5 of 8: Atlas of the Heart by Brene Brown: “This is a book I want to give to each of you,” I tell my students, holding up the beautifully illustrated hardcover book. This textbook on emotional intelligence is full of insights we are rarely taught at home or in school. Read it to understand yourself and the people around you.
Price book 6 of 8: Ghosts by Dolly Alderton: “How many of you have read Bridget Jones’ Diary?” I ask, and one voice drowns out all the others with an enthusiastic “Yes!” Significantly, this is the student who won this award-winning book with her witty and warm-hearted story – a caustic slice of the life story of a working girl in modern London.
Price book 7 of 8: The friend by Sigrid Nunez: This book is for teens and twenty-somethings who love animals with a passion. It’s the story of a cantankerous middle-aged writer who inherits a large dog. Of course, she ends up falling in love with him. But more than the feel-good atmosphere of this story, it’s her slow and meditative writing style that makes it so great.
Price book 8 of 8: Brotherless Night by VV Ganeshananthan: A gripping page-turner about a Tamil family in Sri Lanka. I chose this book, winner of this year’s Women’s Prize, because the protagonists are a young girl and her beloved brothers. The book follows their adolescent years, how they are drawn into the larger current of militancy and how they eventually find their way.
And with that, the awards ceremony is over. The students gather around the winners, passing the books around, leafing through them, browsing the chapters. I wish I had a book for each of these twenty-somethings. What better gift could be for these students, who are preparing to find their place in the world, starting with job interviews, than a book in which they can find wisdom?
See you next week and happy reading!
Sonya Dutta Choudhury is a Mumbai-based journalist and the founder of Sonya’s Book Box, a bespoke book service. Every week she brings you specially curated books that give you a comprehensive understanding of people and places. If you have any reading recommendations or suggestions, write to her at [email protected]
The views expressed are personal
Books mentioned in this issue of Book Box
The artist’s path by Julia Cameron
Stories I have to tell by Kabir Bedi
The Covenant of Water by Abraham Verghese
Courage to drive by Manal Al-Sharif
Atlas of the Heart by Brene Brown:
Ghosts by Dolly Alderton
The friend by Sigfrid Nunez
Brotherless Night by VV Ganeshananthan
