HOT READS FOR THE PRACTITIONER
Title: The more things change, the more things stay the same
Competency: self-development
Who benefits: any older teen or adult who enjoys reading
Consultant Usage: might be useful as a recommendation to an open-minded client
What’s it about? Ah, August. The hottest month of the year for most of you readers. Perhaps it is also a month to get away for a little holiday. A week at the beach or a long weekend in the mountains. Time for yourself. Time to ditch the day-to-day routines. If you are a book reader, maybe you have the latest Lee Child thriller stashed way, or John Sandford’s latest Prey mystery at hand.Â
May I ask you to also consider a novel novel. What about a work of fiction that is also educational? I write from experience. I have read fictional books about historical events that have lead to me read and enjoy history books. And this particular book that I am about to recommend, comes with a much higher recommendation than mine.
A few months ago Newsweek published a list of 50 books we should all read in our lifetime. The Way We Live Now by Anthony Trollope was the number one book on their list. Why? Because the book that was written 150 years ago is about problems that are current events.
A few weeks ago I wrote a three part series about culture, ethics, personal responsibility and accountability. That series parallels this book.
In a lengthy introduction to this Oxford World’s Classic, Professor John Sutherland wrote about this book: “Braced by a year and a half in the colonies, he found the moral stench of London intolerableâ€.
Trollope himself wrote in his Autobiography: “a certain class of dishonesty, dishonesty magnificent in its proportions, and climbing into high places, has become at the same time so rampant and so splendid, will cease to abominable. If dishonesty can live in a gorgeous palace with pictures on all its walls, and gems in all its cupboards, with marble and ivory in all its corners … get in to Parliament, and deal in millions, then dishonesty is not disgraceful, and the man dishonest after such a fashion is not a low scoundrel.â€
Quite a mouthful, quite provocative, and quite relevant in today’s world. The novel is long and filled with the accents of the time, which makes reading it a bit slower but ever so much more delicious. Trollope was a contemporary of Charles Dickens, and it reads a bit like a Dickens book. A note of caution. Those of you who know of Trollope through his Palliser series on PBS will find this novel less carefree and more cynical.
My recommendation – put your mysteries, thrillers, personal growth books in your book bag, but find room for this one too. And by all means enjoy those precious few days away from those day-to-day routines.
Catch you later.
[tags] culture, ethics, personal responsibility, accountability, educational novels, recommended novels, trollope, anthony trollope, bill bradley, william bradley, bradley[/tags]
Bill Bradley
Bill Bradley (mostly) retired after 35 years in organizational consulting, training and management development. During those years he worked internally with seven organizations and trained and consulted externally with more than 90 large and small businesses, government agencies, hospitals and schools.
