As Aventuras de João Sem Medo by José Gomes Ferreira.

Celfocus’ path was and continues to be one of explorers in the technological world, a space of courage and innovation, of continuous discovery and learning, of drawing so that learning happens! I often remember this book in the situations and projects we face. It is a manual to overcome fear, a manual for the entrepreneur.

I read in all formats.

Romances I prefer printed and in Portuguese.

Books in English I usually read on Kindle because of the commodity and comfort of acquiring new titles. More recently, I got into audiobooks, usually non-fiction and a great company on my walks.

Great question!

All literature that escapes the dawn of time becomes timeless. The Bible is timeless. But the stories it tells are thousands of years old.

But going straight to the point, people like stories, I’d say one of the requisites is having good storytelling. Another requisite is the subject. Books that debate the great questions of humanity, human nature, or more philosophical matters, are good candidates for timelessness. Some examples: stories about good and evil (The Lord of the Rings), love (Anna Karénina), change (One-Hundred Years of Solitude), moral options (Crime and Punishment), obsession (Moby Dick), etc.

Another perspective of timelessness: a story that travels through time. Repeating the cycle: birth, life, death through multiple generations. Gabriel García Márquez wrote timeless stories. Stories with epic reports are also good candidates: Homer’s Odyssey, Os Lusíadas by Luís Vaz de Camões, Foundation books by Isaac Asimov.

And yet another perspective, seminal books that somehow founded or marked a specific moment in history, style, or literary form. Dostoievski’s psychiatric romances, the magical realism of One-Hundred Years of Solitude, the fantasy of The Lord of the Rings, the narrative style of José Saramago.

Finally, there are timeless and premonitory stories. 1984 and Brave New World belong to this category. If the world is made up of cycles, these books will never be out of their time. I think I’ve exhausted my perspective of timelessness.

More than a book in particular, I would suggest an experience, for those travelling for work or on holidays out of Portugal, read an author from that country (if possible, recommended by a local).

SIDE NOTE: Two years of Equinox, in Ireland, weren’t enough to read James Joyce’s Ulysses. Interestingly I started reading Israeli authors, A horse walks into a bar by David Grossman, was a good surprise. It’s a book about the influence of the surrounding environment on the mind and human behaviour. The narrative is about a man that tells his life story during a stand-up comedy night in Israel.

Literature has many sources of inspiration. If I could travel back in time, before going to Turkey, I would have read The White Castle, by Orhan Pamuk. A complete guidebook about how to deliver projects in that geography.

The story told on Jeff Bezos is also fascinating, which mentions The remains of the day as inspirational for the work developed at Amazon. The book tells the story of a butler… obsessed with service quality.

Personally, I go back to As Aventuras de João Sem Medo and a quote from this book I particularly enjoy “Forbidden the entry to those who are not amazed by existence”. Curiosity has been the drive throughout all of my professional life.

The adventures of Dom Quixote de La Mancha.

It’s impossible not to feel empathy for that character, idealist, dreamer, indestructible in his principles and values and at the same time so fragile.

Instead of finding Friday, he would find Sancho Pança, would promise him a great piece of land and fight against coconut invaders, he would challenge death with terrible spider fish bites, he would dream of Dulcineias mermaids in grouper outfits, and whistle at the Ipanema girl under a starry sky full of enemy army fires ready to attack. Thomas Mann wrote about Dom Quixote: “The bravest and most daring conqueror in the human domain should always be humour.” It seems to me like the ideal book for a deserted island.