James Daunt’s favorite book is Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, though the Barnes & Noble CEO has never finished it. He says he’s returned to the novel several times, but always stops short of its conclusion so he can preserve the feeling of coming back to it.
That may be an unusual habit for the executive leading America’s largest bookstore chain. But Daunt has never had a conventional career. Before he ran Barnes & Noble, Waterstones, and his own Daunt Books chain, he worked as a purser for Carnival Cruise Lines and later as an investment banker at JPMorgan.
