The book review section may have vanished from the weekend newspaper, but it’s alive and well on the Internet.
I realized that I liked every book I read this year. At first this surprised me but makes sense when I remember that each book I selected had received wide coverage on social media platforms.
Most titles fall into one of two categories: inspiring big picture insights or helpful, detailed how-to instructions. Can’t really say I prefer one over the other — I recommend both.
- Enchantment, Guy Kawasaki. see my review
- Content Rules, Ann Handley, C.C. Chapman and David Meerman Scott. I reviewed this one, too.
- Brains on Fire: Igniting Powerful, Sustainable Word-of-Mouth Movements, Robbin Phillips, Greg Cordell, Geno Church, Spike Jones. The Fiskars social media case study gets tossed around a lot; this is where it got started.
- Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us, Daniel Pink. Why is Psych is so much more interesting now than it was back in college?
- Launch: How to Quickly Propel Your Business Beyond the Competition. Michael A. Stelzner, Reviewed and given away here.
- Poke the Box, Seth Godin. Really, I don’t even feel qualified to comment. It’s that good.
- Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything, Joshua Foer. Not strictly, or even vaguely, a business book but I loved it.
- Microstyle: The Art of Writing Little, Christoper Johnson. Highly recommended if you’d like to improve your Twitter style, and I don’t mean learning which day of the week is best for tweeting.
- Little Bets: How Breakthrough Ideas Emerge from Small Discoveries, Peter Sims. My favorite book of the year. Not sure whether this one has the edge because it’s the one I read most recently and remember best, or whether I truly enjoyed it more than the others. Same thing happens with movies and the Oscar nominations.
It was a terrific year for business books, and you won’t go wrong with any of the above. Let me know which ones I missed, so I can add them to next year’s list.
