Today is a good day to relax with a good book. I read an average of 50 books/year. Here are some of my recommendations from 2011:
Business
- What got you here won’t get you there (Marshall Goldsmith). The 21 most annoying work habits and how you can fix them
- Driving Excellence (Mark Aesch) The great story of how Mark turned around the New Jersey Transit Authority. A practical account of culture change and building an organization around measurable targets
- Onward (Howard Schultz) The story of the turnaround of Starbucks. Get back to core values, get them on one page, and get everyone rowing in the same direction
Non fiction (and non business)
- Champion of Freedom (Conrad Black) Black’s biography of FDR. Expansive, vast and engaging
- Black Hawk Down (Mark Bowden) US Army Rangers caught in Somalia in the first serious fire fight since Vietnam
- Miracles (CS Lewis) An Oxford don explores the existence of the supernatural
Fiction
- Master and Commander (Patrick O’Brien) Meaty, literary naval adventure stories of the Royal Navy during the Napoleonic wars
- Adventures of the Thunderbolt Kid (Bill Bryson) Bryson’s account of growing up in middle America in the ‘50s. I laughed out loud at least 4 times. Very funny
- The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (CS Lewis) Read out loud to my kids, a series full of gentle humour and wisdom. It teaches kids and adults to hate evil and aspire to virtue
