As a change of pace, I thought I’d share something personal instead of analysis. I love reading. I also think that what we love to read reveals a lot about us. And so, here are 4 authors I adore and why:

Jhumpa Lahiri
Lahiri is best known for her Pulitzer Prize winning first book, a collection of short-stories entitled, The Interpreter of Maladies.
Her follow-up is one of my favorite books of all-time, The Namesake. It’s about an Indian American (and his family) growing up in Boston and his feelings of being torn between worlds.
The book is staggering in its insight into what it’s like to grow up feeling like an “outsider” at times. I’ve pushed this book on as many people as possible and will do the same for the movie version to be released in a few months starring Kal Penn of Harold & Kumar fame. Lahiri also wrote an amazing piece in Newsweek a year back entitled, My Two Lives. She describes growing up in America and feeling neither “Indian” nor “American”—feeling pulled in both directions, but falling short at both. It was, without question, the most powerful and resonant one-page article I’ve ever read. If I love reading Michael Lewis for the wisdom I seemingly pick up afterwards, I read Lahiri because it contains the rarest of things for me: identification. I grew up in a world where very few things felt like they were speaking directly to me, in reading Lahiri, I get the incredible feeling of belonging and understanding. I can identify with her and her characters. That’s a pretty powerful feeling.

Michael Lewis
Best known for Moneyball, Liar’s Poker, and most recently, The Blindside.
My favorite Lewis book is Losers, an account of the 1996 Republican Presidential primaries, in which he reveals the level of absurdity in the conduct of politics today. His other books are almost equally brilliant and insightful—but Losers is the under-appreciated of the bunch (and that’s probably why it’s my favorite).
Michael Lewis is a genius because he takes organizations and institutions (MLB, NCAA & NFL, Wall Street, Elections, etc) and makes them fascinating by building a captivating human story around them. Most importantly, you often take away one of the rarest things in life from them: wisdom. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve used Lewis’ anecdotes or “wisdom” in interviews and conversations over the years.

Malcolm Gladwell
Everyone knows Gladwell as the author of Blink and The Tipping Point, but to me, those are just interesting books he’s written.
The real genius of Gladwell is in The New Yorker articles he regularly writes. My last post was on his sensational article about Enron, and the difference between puzzles and mysteries—in a word, fantastic. Here’s what he can do to make you fascinated with ketchup.
Gladwell is a genius because he refuses to give in to over-simplification and instead finds insight in the elegant complexity of the world. He lays these “under the surface” truths out there—typically with astounding results. He is brain candy and blogs at gladwell.com.

Po Bronson
What Should I Do With My Life was a mega-bestseller, and from what I can tell, given to every high school graduate by their parents for the past few years.
The book is amazing and showcases the best of Po: his ability to find the insights, frailties and strengths that make us human. Then he weaves a magnificent vignette of 10-20 pages that will just blow your mind. He’s written a number of great books about the Valley (which I also love), but when I read What Should I Do With My Life a few years back, I was pondering just that question. It gave me no answers. And that’s why I loved it. There is no easy answer to the question—only the struggle with it. And that’s what Po reveals. If you haven’t read the book, and find yourself grappling with that question every now and then, I couldn’t recommend it more.