Man is a storytelling animal—we tell stories to preserve our past, record our legacy, and to teach our children. And we have done so in writing at least since the Epic of Gilgamesh (c. 2100 BC). By using high quality stories about the human condition, Books@Work gives our participants a lens through which to examine the whole of human behavior, in ways that provide for rich and relevant conversations. We know that when we read narrative literature, we identify with characters and reflect on their relationships. We see ourselves in the stories of others and we share our stories.
This is why we don’t read business or self-help books: they tell people how to behave rather than provide an opportunity to explore and learn about themselves and each other.
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What’s a story? In response to that question, many of us might think of a tale with a beginning, middle and an end, or maybe a literary classic of short fiction like Hemingway’s “Hills Like White Elephants” or Jamaica Kincaid’s “Girl.”
But stories exist beyond the page. They’re part of our everyday repertoire for coping with existence.
One way to define the term “story” is any attempt—written, told, or perhaps most commonly and powerfully, thought—to impose a narrative on life.
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When we think about reading together, we often think about classrooms and about parents reading with their children when they are young—about the importance of fostering literacy early on, about modeling good reading practices. As we get older, shared reading and discussion become either less or more formalized. We find it sometimes in the evening book club. More frequently, book discussion becomes the domain of high school and college classrooms, where talking about books is a mark of intellectual progress.
When we delimit book discussion to the realm of the early reader or the intellectual, however, we miss out on literature’s real magic—the ability to transport readers across time and space.
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In a recent Harvard Business Review article, YesWare’s VP of Product, Jake Lavirne, asserts, “An environment of discomfort contributes to creativity by breaking people out of their normal thought patterns, encouraging original thinking and risk-taking.” Interestingly, an effective Books@Work seminar does just that—by creating opportunities to discuss provocative narratives, it pushes participants to challenge their own assumptions and reconsider their beliefs and their routines. Time and again, participants tell us that they come away seeing the world and themselves anew, able to take a step back from their daily lives to consider what those daily lives might really mean. In a recent Books@Work seminar, Professor Ryan Honomichl (whose work has been previously featured on The Notebook) led a seminar with a group of participants in a distribution center near Cleveland on Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go. Reading and discussing Ishiguro’s haunting novel permitted them to cultivate “creative discomfort”—together.
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In cultivating compassion, empathy and an appreciation for the world, mindfulness practice powerfully overlaps with the benefits of reading. After all, a New School Study recently demonstrated that reading – especially literary fiction – makes readers more empathetic. Reading deeply requires for a moment that we enter into another person’s head, and when we read fiction we enter the minds of characters who are often vastly different from ourselves. Learning about another’s perspective or point of view has the potential to profoundly shape us and our interactions with the world. Reading, in this sense, is an opportunity to practice deep and compassionate listening.
We are so convinced of the parallels between reading and sharing a great text and mindfulness practice, that we invite you to share an experiment with us. Participating in a mindfulness seminar or meditating every morning are not the only ways to focus on the moment, engage in compassion and connect with the beauty of the world. You can also read – and you can read with us.
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In the wake of last week’s massacres, we’re all thinking about how we can work to understand each other a little better, how we can overcome and appreciate difference. As Gianpiero Petriglieri writes for the Harvard Business Review, “Fostering civilization means cultivating our curiosity to recognize substantive difference, and our commitment to respect them – within and between groups.” And as novelist Jennine Capó Crucet reminds us, a good book “gives the reader a chance to see what it feels like to be someone else for a little while. And so, in doing that, it shapes a sensory experience that inspires compassion and empathy.”
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Felix writes about Steelcase CEO Jim Keane’s blogpost for the Drucker Society Europe: “He makes an important contribution to the discussion of meaning in the workplace.” Meanwhile, Ann reflects on modernist artist Joaquín Torres-García, Capria thinks about the past and Jessica brings an infographic on parenting to the fore.
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Katherine Paterson, winner of two Newbery Awards and two National Book Awards, wrote, “When I read . . . John Fowles’ Daniel Martin, I hear a symphony orchestra. When I read my own Bridge to Terabithia, I hear a flute solo unaccompanied.” These flute solos are valuable material–entertaining, inspiring, uplifting and thought provoking–in and of themselves. This week, board member Karen Nestor writes about the 10 children’s books she would bring to a desert island.
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The work of art helps us see the world anew–this is no less true for books than it is for a painting or sculpture. Our Marketing and Communications Director picks 10 books that are rich in detail–books that think about flowers and bees, as well as human relationships. These novels will make you laugh as well as reflect on the harder points of being human. And they will certainly entertain you.
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