Which Books You Truly Love An Essay by Salman Rushdie www.nytimes.com I believe that the books and stories we fall in love with make us who we are, or, not to claim too much, the beloved tale becomes a part of the way in which we understand things and make judgments and choices in our daily lives. A book may cease to speak to us as we grow older, and our feeling for it will fade. Or we may suddenly, as our lives shape and hopefully increase our understanding, be able to appreciate a book we dismissed earlier; we may suddenly be able to hear its music, to be enraptured by its song. readingloveidentitylife
Selling new ideas I must come to the topic of “selling” new ideas. You must master three things to do this: Giving formal presentations, Producing written reports, and Mastering the art of informal presentations as they happen to occur. All three are essential—you must learn to sell your ideas, not by propaganda, but by force of clear presentation. I am sorry to have to point this out; many scientists and others think good ideas will win out automatically and need not be carefully presented. They are wrong; many a good idea has had to be rediscovered because it was not well presented the first time, years before! Richard Hamming, You and Your Research Scientific writing