Books Recommended by Catalina Penciu

Business-wise, my goal for this year is to improve my collection and my mindset, but my favorite so far has been David and Goliath by Malcolm Gladwell.

I'm a huge fan of personal stories and biographies with a touch of gastronomy like this one.

I can't forget The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion.

My current obsession is John McPhee. He's a creative nonfiction wizard, and as soon as I got my hands on Draft No. 4, where he explains quite vividly how he chooses the structure of his stories, I was hooked. He even mentions creating an entire article based on a spiral-like diagram structure, before even starting to actually write the piece.

McPhee also wrote a beautiful book called Oranges, about the citrus groves in California; how oranges are grown, taken care of, transformed into the famous juice we all know and love. It's a piece written for the New Yorker in the 60s, but it's still as much alive today.