Wed 19 Dec 2007
With so many good games out this year, 2007 was rough for reading. Far below my 2-books/month target, I only managed to get in 16 total titles this year (vs 26 in ‘06 and 22 in ‘05). Oh well.
Anyway, here’s what I read over the past twelve months:
- Wikinomics - How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything
- Time Exploring the Unexplained - The World’s Greatest Marvels, Mysteries and Myths
- The Future of Work - How the New Order of Business Will Shape Your Organization, Your Management Style, and Your Life
- Generation Kill - Devil Dogs, Iceman, Captain America, and the New Face of American War
- Manufacturing Consent - The Political Economy of the Mass Media
- Peripheral Vision - Detecting the Weak Signals That Will Make or Break Your Company
- Personal Finance For Canadians For Dummies
- The Ultimate Question - Driving Good Profits and True Growth
- The Ghost Map - The Story of London’s Most Terrifying Epidemic - and How It Changed Science, Cities, and the Modern World
- Presenting to Win - The Art of Telling Your Story
- The Decision To Join - How Individuals Determine Value and Why They Choose To Belong
- Japan’s Business Renaissance - How the World’s Greatest Economy Revived, Renewed, and Reinvented Itself
- The Imagination Challenge - Strategy Foresight and Innovation in the Global Economy
- Microtrends - The Small Forces Behind Tomorrow’s Big Changes
- Professional Practices in Association Management - The Essential Resource for Effective Management of Nonprofit Organizations
- Mavericks at Work - Why the Most Original Minds in Business Win
Also, I just started reading The 4-Hour Workweek, but I’ll likely not finish it until the new year…
In particular, Wikinomics and The Future of Work provided massive insight into future work/business structures and meta level hints at the sweeping changes to come in how companies are structured and people get stuff done.Generation Kill and The Ghost Map, both historical recountings, were real page turners - even though I don’t generally read that style of book.
There’s also a few self-help books in there and stuff specifically related to my work managing the IGDA (most of it pretty dry/didactic, but massively helpful nonetheless).
Manufacturing Consent was a dense read, but man, Chomsky is whip smart. I’d like to read more of hist stuff…
Finally, The Ultimate Question was profound in expressing the need to have metrics for customer loyalty/satisfaction. Meaning, measuring profit alone doesn’t necessarily mean your customers are happy. Lots of powerful stuff in that one.
Anyway, enough about books, I’m off to assassinate Robert de Sable…

