Today is World Book Day. No better time it would seem to reflect on the simple, immeasurable joy of reading. As Public Affairs and Public Relations professionals we are bombarded by the written word on a daily basis, political and industry tomes of all persuasions line the walls at PLMR. Newspapers, from all corners of the nation are read and re-read.
Books and the written word shape our professional lives, but what of outside work? What books have changed our lives, what literature are we happy to read over and over again.
Driven by a desire to find out a little more about my colleagues I asked a simple question: What is your favourite book?
The results are a heady mixture of childhood favourites, timeless classics and intellectual firecrackers. It’s a revealing list and one I hope you enjoy perusing.
What’s your favourite book? Please let us know.
PLMR’s favourite books:
Kevin Craig:
Tony Blair: A Journey
Chivonne Preston:
Judith Kerr: The Tiger who came to Tea
David Madden:
Charles Dickens: Bleak House
Jonathan Franzen: The Corrections
Chris Calland:
William Boyd: Any Human Heart
Elin Twigge:
Oscar Wilde: Dorian Gray
Simon Sebag Montefiore: Stalin
Oliver Sacks: The man who mistook his wife for a hat
Lisa Bailey:
Khaled Hosseini: A Thousand Splendid Suns
Henri Charrière: Papillon
Peter Elms:
Deepak Malhotra: I Moved Your Cheese: For Those Who Refuse to Live as Mice in Someone Else’s Maze
Rebecca Newsom:
Phillip Pullman: His Dark Materials Trilogy
Will Davies:
Dylan Thomas: Under Milk Wood
Ernest Shackleton: South
Alexis Darby:
Caitlin Moran: How to be a Woman
Tim Knight:
Antony Beevor: Berlin
George Orwell: Down and out in Paris and London
Sean Long: Longy: Booze, Brawls, Sex and Scandal- The Autobiography of the Wild Man of Rugby League
Lauren Milden:
Sylvia Plath: The Bell Jar
David Malouf: Remembering Babylon
Rukayah Sarumi:
Naguib Mahfouz: The Cairo Trilogy
Chinua Achebe: Anthills of the Savannah
Toni Morrison: Sula
David Noble:
Bernard Cornwell: The Sharpe Novels
Hunter S Thompson: Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
David Baldacci: The Camel Club
Jessica Litwin:
Haruki Murakami: Kafka on the Shore
Nathan Hollow:
Robert D.Putman: Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy
Richard A.Clarke: Against all Enemies
Julian Dibbell: Play Money: Or, How I Quit My Day Job and Made Millions Trading Virtual Loot
Danny Wilding:
Christopher Hitchens: God is not Great
Jennifer Berger
Richard Adams: Watership Down
Georgina Graham:
Ken Follet: Pillars of the Earth
Loung Ung: First they killed my Father
