23 Apr World Book Day: Fluent’s Favorite Books
World Book Day is a time to celebrate the joy of reading. At Fluent Research, we are a team of enthusiastic readers who believe that a good book can transform us, transport us, and expand our outlooks. With that in mind, we’re sharing some of our team’s personal favorites. These literary works have made a huge impact on our hearts and minds.
Lia Abrams, User Experience Researcher
Favorite Book: Maybe You Should Talk To Someone by Lori Gottlieb
This book brought me through the full scope of emotions! I laughed, I cried, I took notes, and I talked to anyone who would listen to me about it. Maybe You Should Talk To Someone is a memoir written by a therapist as she brings readers through her journey of finding and building a relationship with her own therapist. Each character allowed me to reflect and see myself in a new way and Lori herself felt like a best friend by the end. It’s a must-read.
Charlotte Beatty, User Experience Researcher
Favorite Books: Beloved by Toni Morrison, To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf, and The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera
I love these books and authors because they all explore what it means to be an individual within various structures — be that a family, a country, or a social group — and how belonging, love, and sacrifice all touch one another.
Natalia Belchikov, User Experience Researcher
Favorite Book: Pachinko by Min Jin Lee
I viscerally remember what I felt like after reading this book and no other book has had that impact on me. I was deeply moved and inspired by this engrossing family saga. The characters lingered in my thoughts for days after. With this novel, Lee unlocked a newfound appreciation within me (the best type of reading experience) for this sub-genre of historical fiction: the multi-generational family epic.
Allison Caplovitz, Director of Content Research and Evaluation
Favorite Book: American Dirt by Jeanine Cummings
This book was an eye-opening depiction of what it is like to make the harrowing trek from Mexico to the US in search of a better life. The author transported me to migrants’ journey and provided me with a small glimpse into the desperation they feel. While over 400 pages, I couldn’t put it down and I had a new appreciation for all it takes to come to the US.
Heath Cozens, Director of Productions
Favorite Books: The Human Evasion by Celia Green, Einstein’s Dreams by Alan Lightman, and The Case Against Reality by Donald Hoffman.
I choose three books that might not be my all-time favorites, but they’ve all helped me explore a favorite theme: the nature of reality. They challenge our hidden preconceptions and biases, offering tantalizing glimpses beyond the veil. Each book came to me at a different epoch in my life.
Let me start with The Human Evasion, a peculiar and musty tome I stumbled upon in my flatmate’s book pile, back in Wellington in the early ’90s. It’s a cheeky diatribe about escaping from the mental prisons of dogma. It spoke to me. Growing up in Wellington — the party capital of New Zealand, yet still an undeniably small town — it hinted at our untapped potential if only we’d remove our blinkers and question everything. I moved to Japan soon thereafter, a total paradigm shift.
The second book is Einstein’s Dreams by Alan Lightman, which I read around age 30, nearly halfway through my time in Japan. A poetic collection of short stories, it envisions the fever dreams Einstein may have had while formulating his groundbreaking theories in Berne, Switzerland, in 1905. It’s surreal, and unexpectedly moving to witness early 19th-century Swiss life transmuted through the wild concepts that might have colored his dreams.
For my third pick, I’m opting for the mind-blowing, ontologically challenging treatise The Case Against Reality by Donald Hoffman, whose work I discovered after moving to the US. Hoffman brings advanced mathematics, evolutionary game theory, cognitive science, and scientific rigor to argue that the physical world is an illusion: a headset of sorts for interacting with a deeper substrate of reality — unmitigated pure consciousness interacting with itself.
These books echo what I cherish about working for Fluent Research: forgoing assumptions in pursuit of deeper truths.
Tom Fuller, Vice President of Business Development
Favorite Book: Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
Jane Eyre is the earliest book I have read that holds up as a story. It has a moral, character development, and a plot. It speaks to the social issues of its time with a point of view but without preaching.
Evelin Garcia, User Experience Researcher
Favorite Books: I Will Teach You to be Rich by Ramit Sethi and The Undocumented Americans by Karla Cornejo Villavicencio
Financial literacy is SO important! However, these valuable skills aren’t always taught to us by our schools or our families. As someone who grew up first-generation and low-income, I Will Teach You to be Rich has taught me so much about building a healthy and strong financial base. I love that it breaks down some really overwhelming topics and guides you step-by-step through your journey toward building generational wealth. I think everyone should read this book, especially young people!
The Undocumented Americans challenges stereotypes and sheds light on the complexities of the undocumented immigrant experience in a deeply personal and humanizing way. Through the author’s own experiences and those of the people she interviews, the book conveys the emotional impact of living without legal status in a country that is often hostile to immigrants. I think anyone interested in understanding the human cost of America’s broken immigration system should read this book.
Nellie Gregorian, Founder and President
Favorite Books: War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy, The Trumpet of the Swan by E.B. White, and Pippy Longstocking by Astrid Lindgren
Reading War and Peace as a teenager was a formative experience for me. My worldview was profoundly influenced by the philosophical questions posed by Tolstoy and by the main characters of the book who search for purpose and meaning during turbulent times. I love everything and anything written by E.B. White, but I find The Trumpet of the Swan to be the most whimsical and delightful. And Pippy Longstocking is simply my hero — here is a strong girl who is not easily fooled and who is always ready for an adventure!
Mary Meyn, Director of Research
Favorite Books: The Book With No Pictures by B.J. Novak, The Immortalists by Chole Benjamin, and Daisy Joes and the Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid
I love books and reading and I always have, so I had to rein myself in with just three books. I choose three favorite books for three different purposes: my favorite book to read to my kids, my favorite novel, and my favorite audiobook.
I love reading The Book With No Pictures out loud to my kids. I read to them every night before they go to bed and it’s a nice time to relax and connect. But when my kids choose this book I know we’re in for a gleeful fit of giggles. It never fails to make them belly laugh and it’s a great reminder to not take myself too seriously as I sing “glug, glug, glug, my face is a bug…I eat ants for breakfast right off the ruuuuuuug!” IYKYK.
There are some books that just stick with you — that you find yourself thinking about over the years again and again — and The Immortalists by Chole Benjamin is one of those books. The book begins with four young siblings who visit a fortune teller who tells them the exact date that each of them will die. This premise opens the door to the moving and powerful stories of how each sibling lived their life and how they were impacted by this supposed knowledge.
I have read a few of Taylor Jenkins Reid’s books and I think she is a master storyteller. I listened to Daisy Jones and the Six on audiobook and it was phenomenal. The characters that Reid created were so believable that I needed to keep confirming again and again that they were fictional. The book was deeply engrossing and entertaining — I highly recommend listening to it or reading it.
Tiffany Salone, Senior Researcher
Favorite Books: East of Eden by John Steinbeck, In the Heart of the Sea by Nathanial Philbrick, The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss
I really enjoy books that do a lot of world-building and are a slow burn in terms of characters and emotion — you start with the details and find yourself moved by the smallest decisions 100 pages in. All of my favorite books pull off these feats masterfully. The three books I picked are also representations of topics I love to read about; historical fiction, historical non-fiction, and fantasy.
Dan Warren, Director of Youth Development & Education
Favorite Books: Momo by Michael Ende and A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson
Momo is a deeply moving tale about a girl, her friends, and how we value and understand time and love. Even though this book is written for children, I find that it is actually a better book for adults to remind them of what is really important in life and how we can remain aware of those important things. A Walk in the Woods is a brilliant combination of hilarious storytelling and fascinating education about nature. I love how Bryson merges the two seamlessly, like a chorus and verse in music to create entertainment and growth for the reader.