On Reading Lists

Two years go I realized I was missing something in my life, my passion had been stunted by years of busy-bee-ness. So I made a get-back-to-this-passion-plan, it involves my brain and my eyes and hours of sitting around staring, sounds boring. I promised to read 12 books in 12 months. It was not ambitious, yet it was- from avid bookworm to a person who couldn’t sit down for more then half an hour with a seventh grade novel. Last year I posted a few book lists, lists I had read off of during 9th, 10th, 11th and 12th grades.

I did well that first year, the second year, this year, I got ambitious, 52 books in 52 weeks. One book for each week of the year. Looking at the books I read this year, there is a particular subject area in non-fiction that interests me- business books. The thing is they aren’t just books on business, rather they cover a wide array things from human psychology to history, economics and political philosophy. To me these books represent humanology.

All of these books have a common thread weaving throughout them. They represent ideas that for some reason or another have become incoherent to us. Maybe its because these ideas have become outdated, or incoherent, like the concept of “tribes“which Seth Godin discusses in his book “Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us.” But Godin is a lot like Daniel Pink, Ryan Holiday, or Simon Sinek. They write short quick books that make things digestible for people who are in a hurry.

Personally I like the books that have meat, that dive into subjects and represent some of the research that their thesis is grounded on. In particular I liked Duhigg’s “The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business” or Malcolm Gladwells “Outliers: The Story of Success”

Reading these authors I keep coming across the same concepts, angles on history, examples. Like Albert Einstein, not only was he a genius, but he is immortal, immortalized in our society through these books. The question though for me is whether the books are fades, how do you know these pop-psychology-business-self-help-books (humanology- no this is not a guru thing) stand the test of time?

If popularity has anything to do with then “Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future” by Peter Thiel with Blake Masters should be up on the top of my list. I already have 50 our of my 52 books tapped out. Currently I am reading two books which will close me out for this years goal. Should I jump ship and read this 244 page wonder? Should I get off the “reading list,” jump on to the bandwagon and read this book? Not sure if I want to do that BUT there is always my 2015 book list, there are a few open slots.