Oh hi -
It’s been kind of a slow start to my reading for 2024 for a bunch of reasons — but I’ve read at least a few things I think you might like. (Plus, a bunch of stuff I have other feelings about but needed to read for research — so scroll down!)
Books you might like:
The Storm We Made by Vanessa Chan - a gorgeous and gut-wrenching book of historical fiction set in Malay before and during Japanese occupation, as Cecily deals with the disappearance of her teenage son, her furious teenage daughter, and her youngest daughter locked in the basement to be kept safe (along with the consequences of Cecily’s work as a spy a decade earlier.) Warning, there is violence and sexual abuse in this book.
I knew literally nothing about this time or place, and the author does a really beautiful job of setting up the context without distracting from the depths of the characters.
Beautyland by Marie-Helene Bertino - sci-fi is not my usual genre but this book caught my eye and I’m glad it did. Adina is a tiny baby born to an Italian American single mom in Philadelphia in the 80s; as a kid she realizes she’s actually an alien sent from beyond to explain the oddities of Earth to her superiors via fax machine. Roll with it because this is beautifully written and so gently tender.
Interesting Facts About Space by Emily Austin - Enid is obsessed with space and afraid of both bald men and real love. She accidentally starts falling for the wife of a woman she slept with, and also is maybe being stalked? Again, roll with it. It’s fun to be in Enid’s head, and to experience her own personal growth in “realtime” with her.
The Women by Kristin Hannah - another historical fiction, this time about some of the few but heroic women nurses who served in Vietnam. There’s war, romance, politics, complicated family dynamics, and beautiful female friendship. If you know Kristin Hannah, you know you will weep while reading this. (If you don’t know Kristin Hannah, well, consider yourself warned: She is an expert at tear-jerking.)
Besides the fun reading, I’ve been devouring a metric fuck-ton of leadership and management books as part of my research for the book I’m working on.
Some I’m reading for content, some I’m reading for thoughts on structure, others I’m looking for what sticks out as no longer relevant to current leaders (for example: how does one do “management by walking around” via Slack or Zoom, and let’s be honest, was that ever really management in the first place?)
This is a long and kind-of-exhaustive list of some of the stuff I’ve either read already or have waiting on my list, sorted by author.
Trillion Dollar Coach - Alan Eagle, Eric Schmidt & Jonathan Rosenberg
High Output Management - Andrew S. Grove
Leadership - Barbara Kellerman
The Hard Thing About Hard Things - Ben Horowitz
How Big Things Get Done - Bent Flyvbjerg & Dan Gardner
Dare to Lead - Brené Brown
Daring Greatly - Brené Brown
Black Magic - Chad Sanders
Out of Office - Charlie Warzel and Anne Helen Petersen
The Burnout Challenge - Christina Maslach & Michael P. Leiter
Scaling People - Claire Hughes Johnson
The Power Code - Claire Shipman & Katty Kay
Trauma Stewardship - Connie Burk & Laura van Dernoot Lipsky
Setting the Table - Danny Meyer
The Managers Handbook - David Dodson
Remote - David Heinemeier Hansson and Jason Fried
Reinventing Organizations - Frederic Laloux
How Organizations Develop Activists - Hahrie Han
Act Like a Leader, Think Like a Leader - Herminia Ibarra
Compassionate Leadership - Jacqueline Carter & Rasmus Hougaard
Authenticity: What Consumers Really Want - James Gilmore & B. Joseph Pine II
The Successful Manager - James Potter & Mike Kavanagh
ReWork - Jason Fried
Beloved Economies - Jess Rimington & Joanna Levitt Cea
It’s the Manager - Jim Clifton
Extreme Ownership - Jocko Wilink & Leif Babin
The Making of a Manager - Julie Zhuo
Crucial Conversations - Kerry Patterson, Al Switzler, Joseph Grenny & Ron McMillan
Just Work - Kim Scott
Radical Candor - Kim Scott
Stop Waiting for Perfect - L’oreal Thompson Payton
The Fifth Trimester - Lauren Smith Brody
Remix - Lindsay Pollack
Nice Girls Don’t Get the Corner Office - Lois Frankel
How Fucked Up Is Your Management - Melissa Nightingale & Jonathan Nightingale
Unmanageable - Melissa Nightingale & Jonathan Nightingale
How We Show Up - Mia Birdsong
All In - Mike Michalowicz
Four Thousand Weeks - Oliver Burkman
The Five Dysfunctions of a Team - Patrick Lencioni
The Art of Gathering - Priya Parker
The Creative Act - Rick Rubin
Work Won’t Love You Back - Sarah Jaffe
The Messy Middle - Scott Belsky
Start with Why - Simon Sinek
The Good Enough Job - Simone Stolz
The Speed of Trust - Stephen M.R. Covey
The Progress Principle - Steven Kramer & Teresa Amabile
Superbosses - Sydney Finkelstein
Executive Presence 2.0 - Sylvia Ann Hewlett
Tools of Titans - Tim Ferris
Herding Tigers - Todd Henry
Why Do So Many Incompetent Men Become Leaders - Tomas Chamorro
The Wisdom of the Bullfrog - William H. Mcraven
I’d love to know what other books in this ilk you’ve read and liked (or read and hated.) You could have feelings one way or another them for the advice, the structure, the tone, the voice — I’m open to all of it. Just reply and tell me what I’m missing and why you think I should peruse it.
Thanks for subscribing. Feel free to share widely, if you want.
- Amanda
Wow! That is such a list!! Thanks for the recs ☺️