Adviser LibraryApr 9 2020

What I'm reading: James Reed of REED

twitter-iconfacebook-iconlinkedin-iconmail-iconprint-icon
Search supported by
What I'm reading: James Reed of REED

If I had told my colleagues last year that in 2020 it would be company policy that you would be working from home four days a week, many would have been delighted. 

But after just one week of working like this, most of us are missing the camaraderie of the office and all those little things, like popping out for a coffee or a smoke, that we used to take for granted. 

Now that we are confined to our homes for the foreseeable future, we will need to find new distractions.

And if we are living in close quarters with others, reading is a good one because when we are reading it is unlikely that we will be annoying anyone else. 

What is more, reading is an opportunity to seek out insight and inspiration at an exceptionally challenging moment. Reading, like dreaming, offers escapism, succour and solace.

So now seems a good time to reflect on what purpose reading serves, and what books provide solace, or inspiration. And without overthinking this, here are some of the books that came to mind.

The best book I read last year was The Choice by Edith Eger. 

It was recommended to me by my brother-in-law. 

When he started telling me that it was written by a remarkable woman who, as a young ballet dancer was sent with her family from Budapest to Auschwitz in 1944, I realised that I knew the author. 

I had invited Ms Eger to speak at an event in London in 2000. She had stayed with our family for the best part of a week. 

She told her story in the Imperial War Museum in London and received a moving ovation that lasted for minutes. 

Ms Eger’s story is now available for all of us to read in The Choice. The subject is brutal and painful, but her response and what she learnt and has to share feels especially relevant and optimistic now.

A book I read for the third time over Christmas was Memoirs of a Fox-Hunting Man by Siegfried Sassoon. 

Written in 1928 by the war hero and poet, it is a loosely autobiographical story that follows the character George Sherston. It is the first book in Mr Sassoon’s Memoirs trilogy. 

The book takes the reader back to life in Edwardian England before it is brutally disturbed by the first world war.

Hugely popular in its day, it clearly spoke to the generation that had experienced that terrible adversity – although as one elderly master of hounds recently pointed out to me, “it probably reads like science fiction to a modern-day millennial”. 

Mr Sassoon is witty and observant throughout and, in my view, his prose is even better than his poetry.

Lastly, there is the whole genre of mountaineering literature, which as a mountaineer myself I have lapped up over the years. Vivid, inspiring and at times totally heroic – this is good stuff to stiffen our resolve. 

The book that stands out for me is Touching the Void by Joe Simpson. This might in part be because I went to the premiere of the film at the Kendal Mountain film festival with two of my children. 

We found ourselves sitting in the front row of a little cinema surrounded by mountaineering legends that had climbed pretty much every significant peak on the planet. 

Mr Simpson’s story is one of survival, plain and simple. And in dark times his brightness is irresistible.

James Reed is the chairman of recruitment company Reed and author of Life’s Work: 12 Proven Ways to Fast-Track Your Career