'A book is an invitation to engage in a conversation'

Ron Kaufman is a facilitator and consultant also known as "the King of customer Service"

What book(s) are you reading right now?
I usually have between 20 and 30 books open at the same time and people say that's crazy, but that's the way I work. Some of them I travel with, some of them are in my bathrooms at home, some of them I take with me in the mornings, and some of them I have on my phone, either on Audible or Kindle. Wayne Liquorman's The Way of Powerlessness, Meditations by Marcus Aurelius, Hard Goals by Mark Murphy, Bill Nye's Unstoppable. these are just a few of the books I have - and that's just on Audible!
The book(s) that changed your life and shaped your outlook?
To answer this, you must understand what a 'book' is. Most people think it's just words printed on paper within a binding. But, to me, a book is an invitation to engage in a conversation with someone who just hap-pened to write the words down at some time. So when I read a book, I'm taking part in a conversation on some domain of human activity that the author is writing about, from his perspective, at that particular moment in time. To that effect, I think Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Hariri is an incredible book and it ex-plains not just where we've been, but where we might go.
Which authors or titles can you pick up and read any time?
The books I pick up for inspiration are ones like Eckhart Tolle's The Power of Now, Paramahansa Yogananda's Autobiography of a Yogi, and anything on relationships because I'm married now. I learn something or the other from those books and they make my conversations with my wife a little better from the little nuggets of wisdom I gather from them. In fact, I'm listening to a book on Audible with my wife and we discuss each chapter everyday.
Which books would you love to pass on to your children (or any young person) to read and treasure?
Definitely Sapiens, which I already have passed on. The other is Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged - a classic book that teaches personal responsibility. Critical Path and Operation Manual for Spaceship Earth by Buckminster Fuller. Of course, Dr. Seuss's Oh, the Places You'll Go!.
Would you say books are still relevant today? Why?
Books shape our worldview and give us a broader understanding of what is actually going on and how we can solve the problems we have. So read more, so that you can bet-ter understand the world we live in. We and our kids, and our kids' kids have to evolve a new discourse of collaboration on the plan-et. And that only comes from books.