If you haven’t found the time to bake a sourdough, complete a mini MBA, write a book, or whatever aspirational achievement is the latest lockdown fad then you have failed at life. That is if you believe the multitude of self-appointed self-help experts that are experts in successfully spending time that so few of us have to spare.

Certainly, a working life lived in lockdown does not automatically equate to an abundance of time. Research from LinkedIn in partnership with the Mental Health Foundation shows that on average Britons have been working 28 hours of overtime per month since lockdown began; the equivalent of four extra days. 

Yet while we don’t have time to spare, we nonetheless desperately need the space to learn. With this in mind we asked a selection of industry leaders what we should add to our summer reading lists this year, in order to better tackle the issues that really matter.

Anthony Bourdain, ‘A Cook’s Tour’

I’m an idiot. I didn’t listen to the Beatles until my late twenties. I was the same with The Wire, waiting years before I finally caved and binged the whole lot in two whiskey-fuelled weeks. But perhaps the worse instance of my pretentious desire to belligerently oppose the populous has been overlooking the late Anthony Bourdain. Like I say, I’m an idiot. But if lockdown afforded me one positive thing, it was more time than I’m used to. And so, I finally began watching Bourdain’s eye-opening and brain-expanding Parts Unknown. Barely two episodes in, I eagerly ordered one of his books, A Cook’s Tour, and consumed it in the space of two sittings.

And here’s the score, in case, like me, you’ve accidently missed, or binned, the memo. Bourdain rules. Big time. As well as having been an authentic and honest presenter, he writes fast, free and fully engages throughout, as any good writer should. Sure, there’s a lot of food talk in there, but that’s like saying there’s too much fish chat in The Old Man and the Sea. For me, the test of a good book is whether it makes you think after you’ve finished it. A Cook’s Tour got me thinking plenty.

On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong

“It’s not fair that the word laughter is trapped inside slaughter”. On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong is a beautiful, poetic and raw coming-of-age story by the son of Vietnamese immigrant parents in the US, written in the form of a letter to his illiterate mother.

Little Dog grows up in Hartford with his traumatized mother and schizophrenic grandmother. At 14 he takes a job picking tobacco on a farm and begins a fraught relationship with a white boy named Trevor, the grandson of the farm’s owner.

The essence of the novel is in its title: in early youth, there’s a brief period of happiness, which can’t be carried forward into disappointing, grown-up, settled existence.

This is one of those books that you want to read as slowly as possible to savour every line.

Girl, Woman, Other by Bernardine Evaristo

Arguably the most talked-about book of 2019. While the hype made me pick it up, re-reading it in the current context of Black Lives Matter gave it a whole new meaning. If you, like me, are soul searching, this is bound to have a transformative effect.

Girl, Woman, Other is a collection of interconnected stories of 12 Black British womxn aged 19 to 93, all very different, all very relatable. With each chapter, you dive into a range of sexualities, classes, cultural backgrounds, occupations, and relationships.

The format of the book itself is fluid, sitting between prose & poetry. Free flowing, grammatically incorrect at times, with very few full stops. The millennial in me loved it & instantly drew parallels to the language of the internet that we’ve all grown so used to.

More importantly, it opened my eyes to the experiences of these remarkable British women, some unapologetically feminist, some grappling with their idea of race, while some making ingenious use of their hijab to have a hands-free phone conversation. The author puts these women, very refreshingly at the very centre of life, to feel “seen”, to be empathised with, and of course relatable to. It was everything, and more, I could’ve asked for.

Ultimately, it’s making a very critical point about how we’re living a shared human life with universal truths and that it’s in our interest to be inclusive above all. Something our generation is *hopefully* finally comfortable with. Go get it now!

The Lies That Bind: Rethinking Identity by Kwame Anthony Appiah

Since the Black Lives Matter movement gained renewed momentum this summer, many book lists have sprung up online in an effort to get people, white people in particular, educating themselves about racism. The make-up of the bestseller lists in the UK and US gives me cautious optimism that our society is undergoing a reckoning on the problem of racism, but I do sometimes wonder if these books launch readers too far into strategies for combating racism without establishing a foundational historical understanding of how we got here.

Kwame Anthony Appiah’s book The Lies That Bind: Rethinking Identity helps with shaping our conception and appreciation of the present moment by challenging our assumptions of how identity works. He shows how our affiliations of nationality, culture, class, religion and especially race are largely arbitrary and riddled with contradictions.

As a brand strategist, I’m a storyteller, and it has been fascinating to explore the entanglements within the stories we tell ourselves. I think Kwame’s book can be quite instructive at this moment in time to get us re-appraising the stories and myths we tell about ourselves, our communities and our countries. I think it’s a must-read for all creatives seeking to truly dismantle long-held, entrenched narratives and start telling new, and truer stories.

THE CULTURE CODE (The Secrets of Highly Succesful Groups) by Daniel Coyle

During this quarantine I welcomed the opportunity to delve back into The Culture Code, a book by Daniel Coyle I had read some time ago but wanted to rediscover in light of current events. The Culture Code examines the commonalities of successful groups across a variety of fields, from army taskforces to Silicon Valley supergeeks, legendary sports teams to toddlers on the playground. It’s fascinating to uncover the things that these groups all share with each other. Through applying a handful of principles, these high-achieving teams manage to push their collective limits, solve their challenges together, and achieve great results that not only set them apart, but also help create a uniquely firm bond in the process.

With so much to figure out on the other side of this COVID-19 crisis, but so little information as to what will actually happen, this seems like a good time to wrap our heads around the things that matter most, at home and at the office both. Teams, lifestyles and ways of working will have been profoundly transformed post-COVID and The Culture Code helped confirm how crucial it will be, in this uncertain future, to keep building creative, positive and inclusive cultures at work.