“So may books be always with you.” – Lisa Bu

November 4th, 2013
Galina · Staff Recommendations

I love TED talks. TED, which is an acronym for Technology, Education and Design, is a nonprofit organization whose slogan is “Ideas Worth Spreading.” The speaker series was launched in 1984. There are now more than 1,500 TED talks available! For those who have never seen a TED talk, I highly recommend visiting www.TED.com and taking a look.

Not only are the TED Talks always interesting and inspiring, but they practically beg to be shared. I can’t wait to share with our readers an inspiring and personal talk by Lisa Bu. This beautiful talk about the power of books and the life-altering affect they had on Lisa’s life is just six minutes and seventeen seconds long. Please watch it!

Isn’t she an amazing speaker? Lisa is so natural, so engaging and moving that you just want to hear more and more. Lisa talks about the importance of comparative reading.

“Compare and contrast gives scholars a more complete understanding of a topic. So I thought, well, if comparative reading works for research, why not do it in daily life too? So I started reading books in pairs.”

What a fantastic idea! I hope that this inspiring talk will make everyone want to reach out for not just a book – but, for a pair. As I was putting this together, I realized there were a ton of other pairs I wanted to include. What is on your reading list? Please share!

Here is my list of pairs:

The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga + Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank + The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

Macbeth by William Shakespeare + Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn

Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe + The Sex Lives of Cannibals: Adrift in the Equatorial Pacific by J. Maarten Troost

Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916), by James Joyce + Cat’s Eye by Margaret Atwood

The Night Circus, by Erin Morgenstern + Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen

Leningrad Diary by Vera Inber + City of Thieves by David Benioff