4 books I've loved, a ton I'm reading (but maybe not loving...), & an ask

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!)

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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.

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- Amanda