Tag: reading

A year in books – my 2017 reading list

~ g BRETT miller (he/him/his) ~ 4 Comments

I have started on my 2018 reading adventure with Walter Isaacson’s new biography of Leonardo da Vinci (who, as readers of this blog will know, is a bit of a role model for me). I hope to do better this year at sharing my thoughts as I go. Because last year I barely did that at all, I thought I would go ahead and just share my list from 2017. It is a shorter list than some years, longer than others, surprisingly light on fiction this year. This does not, of course, include any of my “short form” readings online and elsewhere.

Would love to hear your thoughts on any of these books, and any recommendations from your own 2017 list that you think I should add to my 2018 list.

Non-Fiction

George Lucas: A Life by Brian Jay Jones

The Card Catalog: Books, Cards, and Literary Treasures by Library of Congress

Reformations: The Early Modern World, 1450-1650 by Carlos M.N. Eire

Some Remarks: Essays and Other Writings by Neal Stephenson

The Glass Cage: Automation and Us by Nicholas Carr

Faraday, Maxwell, and the Electromagnetic Field by Nancy Forbes

Alone on the Wall by Alex Honnold, with David Roberts

Reinventing the Sacred: A new view of science, reason, and religion by Stuart Kauffman

The Employee Experience Advantage: How to Win the War for Talent by Giving Employees the Workspace They Want, the Tools They Need, and a Culture They Can Celebrate by Jacob Morgan

Scrum: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time by Jeff Sutherland

Scale: The Universal Laws of Growth, Innovation, Sustainability, and the Pace of Live in Organisms, Cities, Economies, and Companies by Geoffrey West

The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People : Power Lessons in Personal Change by Steven R. Covey

Small Arcs of Larger Circles: Framing through other patterns by Nora Bateson

Hymns for the Fallen: Combat Movie Music and Sound after Vietnam by Todd R. Decker

Exponential Organizations: Why new organizations are ten times better, faster, and cheaper than yours by Salim Ismail

Fiction

Anathem by Neal Stephenson

Returning to Zero (Mick O’Malley #2) by Alan B. Johnston

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy by John le Carre

The Spy Who Came In From the Cold by John le Carre

The Tomorrow Code by Brian Falkner

The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O by Neal Stephenson, Nicole Galland

(Note: the links to books on this page point to Amazon so that you can buy them if you’d like; if you do purchase a book by following one of these links, I will get a small percentage of the transaction. This will not increase your cost for the book, but will let me take Julie out for a nice meal once in a while.)

General Mattis on ‘Too Busy To Read’

~ g BRETT miller (he/him/his)

“The problem with being too busy to read is that you learn by experience (or by your men’s experience), i.e. the hard way. By reading, you learn through others’ experiences, generally a better way to do business, especially in our line of work where the consequences of incompetence are so final for young men.

Thanks to my reading, I have never been caught flat-footed by any situation, never at a loss for how any problem has been addressed (successfully or unsuccessfully) before. It doesn’t give me all the answers, but it lights what is often a dark path ahead.”

Source: General James ‘Mad Dog’ Mattis Email About Being ‘Too Busy To Read’ Is A Must-Read

50 books in 52 weeks – not this year

~ g BRETT miller (he/him/his) ~ 2 Comments

I enjoy reading, so like many people I have set a goal for myself to read at least 50 books a year for the last couple of years. I read 45 last year, you can see my list on GoodReads.  As I was getting ready to publicly commit to another year of 50-in-52, though, I realized that I’m not really ready to move on from the books I read in 2011 2010.

It’s not that I don’t want to read anything new, I do. I’ve got several new books on my list, including David Siteman Garland’s Smarter, Faster, Cheaper, Neal Bascomb’s story of FIRST Robotics, The New Cool, and Hal Needham’s Stuntman! I’m also looking at some older books that I’ve never read.

But well over half of the books I read last year are still bouncing around inside my head.

In a blog post last October, Harold Jarche  expressed a similar sentiment in the context of conferences that he attends:

One thing missing in these discrete time-based events is that there is little time for reflection. … This presentation is followed by some immediate questions & discussions and a coffee break. Then it’s off to see the next presentation. Reflection, if it occurs, comes much later, and usually after the participants have gone home.

Replace “presentation” with “book”, and that his how I am feeling about the books I read last year.

During a pre-launch webinar for his new book Where Good Ideas Come From, Steven Johnson also talked about the state of reading.

Bill Gates takes a “reading vacation” to read. Ray Ozzie does the same thing. A very interesting strategy; usually when we read it is at night, when we are tired and have 20-30 minutes before we go to bed. Takes a couple of weeks to read, you lose the possible connections between the books you read.

All of this is my overly long way of saying that I’m not committing to 50-in-52 this year. Instead of moving on to the next conference, in my case a new year of reading only new books, I’m also going to spend some time quality time reflecting on the books I read last year.

What are your reading plans for 2011?

Update: Check out my  2010 Reading List lens on Squidoo.