From the moment she learned to read, business consultant and owner of Ciceron Communications Mirela Španjol has been a passionate reader. Studying literature was a natural choice for her, and since she studied German literature, fiction has marked her life the most – from Hermann Hesse and ‘The Glass Bead Game’, ‘Siddhartha’, and ‘Steppenwolf’, which sparked her later engagement with personal development and psychology, to more challenging literature such as ‘The Magic Mountain’ by Thomas Mann, one of the most important novels of the 20th century.
Timeless Phenomenon
When she reads beautiful literature, she says she feels as if someone is pouring all the beauty of life and deep emotions she experiences with the main characters into her. This, she adds, provides her with a glimpse of ancient times and a transgenerational transfer of experiences from previous generations. If she had to answer the well-known question about the book she would take to a deserted island, it would be the masterpiece of magical realism ‘One Hundred Years of Solitude’ by Gabriel García Márquez, for which the author later received the Nobel Prize.
– That book reflects my natural introversion. With the inhabitants of Macondo and the Buendía family, I would live an idealistic life free from commercialism, full of mysticism, temporal intertwining, history, fantasy, and tribal isolation. Recently, I watched the adaptation of that novel on Netflix. A very well and faithfully portrayed series, I enjoyed it. From professional literature, I would choose ‘The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind’ by Gustave Le Bon, a precursor to today’s theory of political influence, which opened my eyes at the beginning of my career to how deceptive and powerful the force of words and manipulation of emotions can be. In the Lider podcast, I said that we are all hostages of good speakers, and that book, although over two hundred years old, partly explains this timeless phenomenon – Španjol reminds, also the author of the semi-autobiographical novel ‘Second Platform, Fourth Track’ and the bestseller ‘The Power of Persuasion’.
