Why We Read

Introducing a newsletter reviewing buzzing finance / business books

I started reviewing books on my Twitter account when COVID first started. For someone with a private account and only 40 followers, interaction was limited to a handful of my friends. As my book collection grows and my appreciation of books proportionally grows with it, I thought this platform could potentially be more suitable to share my reviews.

To introduce this page, I share a few thoughts on the beauty of reading, and refer to some of my favourite extracts from ‘Why We Read’, a book that highlights 70 authors’ relationships with books and the deep emotions that arise with every reading experience. The typical response would be to make the best use of your time and to expand your horizons and vocabulary. But reading is much more than that.

I’ve recently gotten into reading biographies, especially of the significant characters in the financial industry – whether idols or notorious. While I do learn a lot from the tips and tricks I read in these books, I also enjoy putting myself in the main character’s shoes... Living the ups and downs with them… Experiencing every wild adventure they encounter. In such busy times, non-fiction gives us the flexibility to pick and choose what chapters we want to cover and what message we want to receive, compared to fiction, where every sentence on every page matters. We read, as Timothy Morton describes, because we want to be surprised. We want to finish a chapter in a different place, with a changed opinion, with a grown outlook, to where we started.

Rana Mitter, author of China’s Good War, reminds us that ‘we assume that because something has been recorded, it will stay recorded’. While burning books is something we tend to relate to ancient colonisers, some regimes are still censoring reading material. Consequently, we read to reflect and form opinions on reading material while they are still available, because we never know when these books will cease to exist.

I tend to agree with Moose Allain’s tweet where he says “Your bookshelves are a kind of autobiography”. In Arabic, a popular saying is “Tell me who you befriend; I’ll tell you who you are”. Celebrated Abbasid poet, Al Mutanabbi, further articulates “The best companion of all time is a book”. Therefore, if you allow your books to be your best friend, your personality would be shaped by what you read. Your character is your library!

Stay tuned for the next review: Guy Hand’s newly released autobiography,
The Dealmaker: Lessons from a Life in Private Equity.