Here’s the list. Almost in chronological order.

1. iCon: Steve Jobs – Biography
2. Losing My Virginity – Autobiography of Sir Richard Branson
3. Stay Hungry Stay Foolish – Rashmi Bansal
4. Rich Dad Poor Dad – Robert Kiyosaki
5. Rich Dad Quadrant – Robert Kiyosaki
6. Richest Man in Babylon – Samuel Clason
7. The Intelligent Investor – Benjamin Graham
8. Think and Grow Rich – Napoleon Hill
9. Harry Potter (the entire series) – JK Rowling
10. The Great Gatsby – F. Scott Fitzgerald
11. The Catcher in the Rye – JD Salinger
12. The Da Vinci Code – Dan Brown
13. Angels & Demons – Dan Brown
14. Digital Fortress – Dan Brown
15. Social Intelligence – Daniel Goleman
16. Mind Over Medicine – Lissa Rankin
17. Awaken The Giant Within – Tony Robbins
18. As A Man Thinketh – James Allen
19. Strengths Finder 2.0 – Tom Rath, Gallup Inc.
20. The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari – Robin Sharma
21. The Pathfinder – Nicholas Lore
22. The Four Hour Work Week – Tim Ferriss
23. Money: Master The Game – Tony Robbins
24. The Philosophy Book – Will Buckingham, DK Publishing
25. Neurologic – Eliezer Sternberg
26. Frogs Into Princes – Richard Bandler
27. NLP: The new technology of achievement – Steve Andreas & NLP Comprehensive
28. The Structure of Magic 1 – Richard Bandler
29. Positive Intelligence – Shirzad Chamine
30. How to Fail at almost everything and still Win Big – Scott Adams
31. The Six Figure Speaker – Brian Tracy
32. The Four Hour Body – Tim Ferriss (work in progress)
33. The Effective Executive – Peter F. Drucker (work in progress)
34. Stealing Fire – Steven Kotler & Jamie Wheal
35. Big Magic – Elizabeth Gilbert
36. Anything You Want – Derek Sivers
37. The Obstacle Is The Way – Ryan Holiday
38. Siddhartha – Hermann Hesse
39. Unlimited Power – Tony Robbins
40. Thinking, Fast and Slow – Daniel Kahneman (work in progress)
41. The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck – Mark Manson
42. The World’s Fittest Book – Ross Edgley
43. Don’t say Yes when you want to say No – Herbert Fensterheim Ph.D
44. Own the Day Own your Life – Aubrey Marcus
45. 48 Laws of Power – Robert Greene
46. Linchpin – Seth Godin
47. 12 Rules for Life – Jordan Peterson (work in progress)
48. Never Eat Alone – Keith Ferrazzi
49. Wheat Belly – Dr. William Davis
50. The Way of the Superior Man – David Deida
51. The Game – Neil Strauss
52. The Imposter Syndrome Remedy – Dr. EV Estacio, Ph.D.
53. Atomic Habits – James Clear
54. The 5 AM Club – Robin Sharma
55. Vagabonding – Rolf Potts
56. The War of Art – Steven Pressfield
57. The Millionaire Fastlane – M.J. DeMarco
58. The Million-Dollar, One Person Business – Elaine Pofeldt
59. 40 Rules of Love – Elif Shafak (work in progress)
60. Total Recall – Autobiography of Arnold Schwarzenegger (work in progress)
61. Never Split the Difference – Chris Voss (work in progress)
62. Getting Things Done – David Allen
63. Men, Women & Worthiness – Brene Brown
64. I thought it was just me, but it isn’t – Brene Brown
65. Designing your life – Bill Burnett & Dave Evans
66. The Rational Male – Rollo Tomassi
67. Focus – Heidi Grant Ph.D. and Tory Higgins Ph.D.
68. The Easy Way to Stop Smoking – Alan Carr
69. Sapiens – Yuval Noah Harari
70. Personality & its Transformations – Lecture series by Jordan Peterson
71. Maps of Meaning – Lecture series by Jordan Peterson
72. The One Thing – Gary Keller & Jay Papasan
73. The Little Book of Happiness – Miriam Akhtar MAPP
74. Four Thousand Weeks – Oliver Burkeman
75. The Little Prince – Antoine De Saint Exupery
76. Digital Fortress – Dan Brown
77. Meditations – Marcus Aurelius
78. $100 Million Offers – Alex Hormozi
79. Mastery – Robert Greene
80. The Dip – Seth Godin
81. Beyond Order – Jordan Peterson
82. Codependent No More – Melody Beattie
83. The Gifts of Imperfection – Brene Brown
84. Bird by Bird – Anne Lamott

It was a year ago that I discovered that I have a natural inclination to speak to (or in front of) people and that I am better at it than most of the other things I do. Since the time I found this strength of mine, I’ve dedicated countless of hours to nurture this talent and hopefully have come a long way.

I do this because it is one thing to be talented at something, and that can take you far in life. But it is entirely another thing to work hard in that talent and make it a skill. A skill is something that you’ve cultivated, and not just inherited. It’s something that you can keep perfecting with practice. It’s something that you can put to competition with the rest of the people who’re also talented. It is this skill that will surely take you to the highest levels of your chosen endeavour.

Like any other skill, you can learn a great deal by just observing ‘the best’ players in that game. And if you observe with enough attention and curiosity, your brain models the behaviour of these people and automatically begins to mimic it in your own behaviour.

For this purpose, I began listening to more and more speakers. (Though I already used to listen to a lot many talks)

I watched numerous TED Talks, Debates, Conferences, Interviews, Presentations, Motivational Speeches, Keynote Speeches, and even famous scenes by some very well renowned actors. I wanted to expose my brain to as much speaking as possible, so that it could unconsciously pick up styles and strengths of these great speakers. Some people that I ended up following (and I think you should too) are Werner Erhard, Tony Robbins, Tim Ferriss, Russell Brand, Sam Harris, Scott Dinsmore, Sir Ken Robinson, Tom Bilyeu and Marie Forleo also has become my recent favourite. And then there are speeches by Shashi Tharoor and Prime Minister Narendra Modi that I couldn’t admire enough.

So for anyone who’s looking to learn public speaking, my first suggestion would be to watch, immerse in and admire a lot of good speeches. And let your curiosity do the rest of the thing. Doing just this exercise would put you in a much better space than you’d be in without it.

Considering you’ve come this far, I want to come to the second step, that is action. Or should I say, practicing what you’ve observed.

My mode of choice was to join Toastmasters International, that is a global organisation, which has structures for developing people in communication and leadership capabilities. How it works is that you join any local Toastmasters club, which is essentially a group of people who come together once every week and hold a meeting where people either deliver speeches or work in various leadership capacities. Once you’ve joined such a club, you too get to deliver speeches and work in various leadership capacities.

Let me elaborate Toastmasters structure for developing people in public speaking. Each member is given a communication manual that has 10 speech projects. Every project deals with one specific skill that a public speaker must possess. So as a member, you have to deliver these 10 speeches, while working on and demonstrating the specific skill your current speech project deals with.

Let me explain this with an example. One of the speech projects is about ‘body language’. So while delivering this speech project, you have to specifically work on various body language skills and weave some of these skills into your speech. One key body language skill is the use of hand gestures. So while preparing for and delivering this speech you have to carefully integrate the use of hand gestures throughout the speech. Once you’ve done this, you instantly add one tool to your ‘public speaker toolkit’. And with enough practice of this tool, you can begin to utilize as and when you desire. And each tool you add to your toolkit, adds to your effectiveness and grace as a public speaker.

There are 10 speech projects in the first communication manual you get after joining toastmasters (including the project about body language). After you’ve completed these 10 speech projects, you proceed to other sets of manuals which deal with certain advanced aspects of public speaking.

Today as I’m writing this, I know that completing those 10 speech projects have added immense value to me as a speaker. Among others, one key benefit is that you get a checklist of the things you have to integrate in a speech you’re creating or preparing for. I will mention some of these checklist items (that I got from those 10 speech projects) that I always consider while preparing for a speech.

• Objective of the speech (what’s the general purpose and specific purpose, what outcome do I want after having given this speech)
• Structure of the speech (planning an impactful opening and closing. Keeping the body of the speech engaging; attention span of the audience is like that of 3 year old’s. Is it chronological in nature, a problem-solution piece, anecdote, or an abstract unstructured one)
• What literary devices can I add? (simile, metaphors, repetition, other rhetoric devices)
• Body language (how can I add the use of stance, movement on stage, hand gestures, facial expression to better communicate my message)
• Vocal variety (where can I employ variation in my voice’s pitch, volume, speaking rate and tonality)
• Research (is there any research needed. Can I add some statistics, facts etc. to validate my point)
• Visual or auditory aids (do I need to add any visual aids like PPT or props, or auditory aids like music playing in the background)

All of this might seem overwhelming but really is not. That is because of two reasons. One is that while practicing these speech projects, you deal with one specific skill at a time. So you can really isolate it and focus on just that skill instead of a 100 other things. The other reason is that in a very short while you begin to incorporate all the above aspects intuitively and don’t have to consciously think about them too much.

All the above things I’ve written deal with the question “how do I become a good speaker”. But now I want to deal with the more important question, “what do I speak about”.

I want to introduce you all to Dale Carnegie here. He was a visionary writer and lecturer who lived through late 80’s to mid-90’s. Much of Dale’s ground-breaking work has been in the subjects of self-improvement and he has been like a founding father throughout the public speaking movement.

He advised to young speakers that “if you want to be a great public speaker, speak about something that makes you angry about the world” (not verbatim).

This basically means that if you look inside, find out something that you really care about, and then speak around that topic or subject, you instantly infuse your speech with most of the necessary components of a great speech i.e. authenticity, reliability, credibility, passion, drive, emotion etc. Your speech moves from an informative announcement to a heartfelt story. This, I believe is at the heart of all speaking. Because the purpose of all good speakers is to make some change in their audience, or the whole society. And if you find that one thing that makes you angry about the state of this world, you have taken a quantum leap as a public speaker, almost instantly.

And do not worry if you can’t find something that maddens you or you’re not that kind of person that gets angry at stuff. I’m sure if you ask yourself this question you can find that thing for yourself, this question is “what thing in the world I would absolutely change, if I had all the time, money, capability and resources with me?”

All of us have an answer to that question buried deep inside our hearts. Do yourself a favour and ask yourself this question. YOU can thank me later.

FINALLY, I want to leave you with one perspective. I often get disturbed when people utter the words Public Speaking. I get disturbed because everyone believes that when you are on the stage it’s all about speaking, hence the name ‘Public Speaking’, but giving a great and effective presentation is much more about Listening than it is about Speaking. Someone who’s on the stage is constantly listening to his audience. The words the audience is using during interactions, their eye movements, their body posture, the overall mood and energy of the room, all of these are feedback for the speaker. And for a speaker to be really effective he has to constantly remain in this feedback loop. Otherwise it’s just like reading out from a piece of paper, which is boring, monotonous and ineffective. So I’d like to replace the title Public Speaker with Public Communicator.

Because it is in the act of ‘Communicating’ that the true magic of Public Speaking reveals itself.