Tag Archives: Books

Books to read in 2016

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I set an ambitious reading goal for 2015. I wanted to read 35 books, 33 of which were supposed to come from this list. I managed to read 25 books for the year, which was down from the 27 I read in 2014. Of the 25 I read last year, 17 came from my list, and 8 jumped the queue. For some reason, 8 seems to be the magic number as that was the same number that jumped the queue in 2014.

Even though I didn’t make my goal of 35, it was still a good year for reading. I focused my reading on authors that I like, recommendations from trusted sources (of the human variety), and a mix of primarily science fiction and business. I did my best to stay away from book series and trilogies, and focused my business reading on story-based biography books.

Here are the best books I read in 2015, which you may want to use to seed your 2016 reading list. As I did last year, I’ve broken the list into three categories: general recommendations, business books, and those I found entertaining which didn’t make my Must Reads list.

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Book review: Uncommon Stock

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Uncommon Stock: Power Play by Eliot PeperI’ve grown tired of the trilogy. I really have. I wish authors would write one book that is a complete story, or just publish the three books as one tome. I’m not a fan of drawing a story out into three books, and I don’t get the rationale behind it. Then again, I’m not an author, so what do I know?

There are exceptions, however, and the Uncommon Stock series by Eliot Peper is one of them. After reading Uncommon Stock 1.0, the book was good enough that I decided to venture into Uncommon Stock: Power Play, which then drew me into Uncommon Stock: Exit Strategy.

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Book review: In the Plex

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In the Plex by Steven LevyOne of my favorite books from last year was The Everything Store – Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon. It was one of my favorite types of business books, a third party account that chronicled the building of Amazon. In the comments to my book review, one of my favorite bloggers, Rohan (author of the blog A Learning a Day), mentioned In the Plex – How Google Thinks, Works, and Shapes Our Lives by Steven Levy.  Since the book fit my theme of a biography/story-based business book and came recommended from a trusted source, I decided to let it jump the queue in my 2015 reading list.

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Book review: Neuromancer

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Neuromancer by William GibsonWhen I started my deep dive into sci-fi reading a couple of years back, a friend of mine, Andrew Schmitt, recommended that I read Neuromancer by William Gibson. While some shy away from a classic written 30 years ago, I looked at it as required reading if I wanted to really understand the genre. Plus, the book came highly recommended, which has become one of the key criteria in screening my extensive reading list that I’ve been stumbling through this year.

To say that Neuromancer is a classic sci-fi novel is an understatement. It really needs to be required reading for anyone venturing into the genre. In addition to coining the term “cyberspace”, there are many other themes that have been taken forward in other science fiction works. As I was reading the book, I could see how the book influenced classic science fiction movies like The Matrix. The themes present in other books are too numerous to mention.

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Book review: Leadership Transformed

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Leadership Transformed by Dr. Peter FudaIn April of last year, a daily deal for Leadership Transformed: How Ordinary Managers Become Extraordinary Leaders by Dr. Peter Fuda showed up in my email inbox. I decided to take a chance on it as I like learning new management principles, especially those related to leadership. It also didn’t hurt that it was only $1.99.

I didn’t get around to reading the book last year. I put it in my queue for this year, even though I’ve found business stories like Hatching Twitter and The Everything Store more interesting. Here are my thoughts after reading it.

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Book review: Influx

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Influx by Daniel SuarezOne of my first forays into hard science fiction, and one of my favorite book(s), was the Daemon/Freedom two-book series by Daniel Suarez. I was a little disappointed in his follow-up novel, Kill Decision, but not enough to keep me away from his latest work, Influx.

The premise of Influx is a little different than Suarez’s first two novels. Where his first two works were heavily based on near-term technologies, Influx takes more of a fictional, borderline fantasy approach to technology. In other words, the technologies explored in Influx aren’t as well developed as those he’s explored previously. I would venture to guess that the technologies are almost a wish list of what Suarez wishes were available to us.

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Book Review: Brave New World Revisited

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Brave New World RevisitedFor most people, Brave New World is required reading while in high school. I wasn’t one of them. But after reading Neil Postman’s Amusing Ourselves to Death, I decided it was time to pick-up Aldous Huxley’s classic, almost 30 years after my high school graduation. There were just too many references to it in Postman’s book to ignore.

I was a little concerned as I ventured in given what I heard others say, including my own kids. Still, it felt like the right thing to do, and it was. I thoroughly enjoyed it. In fact, I was blown away by Aldous Huxley’s ability to foreshadow the homogenization of society due to the effects of mass media. It made enough of an impact, that I added Brave New World Revisited to my 2015 reading list. I wanted to get more insight into Huxley’s point of view and how it influenced the writings and concepts in Brave New World.

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Book review: The Image – A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America

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The ImageRyan Holiday’s Trust Me I’m Lying: Confessions of a Media Manpiulator had a profound impact on how I view and consume modern media. It’s an eye-opening account, many times from a first person point of view, of how the general public can be manipulated, coerced and deceived through clever marketing tactics. It is a book that I regularly recommend to people who are interested in understanding modern marketing. One of the books which Holiday references for additional reading is Daniel J. Boorstein’s The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America. Given how much I liked Trust Me I’m Lying, I felt The Image would be worth reading.

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Book review: Off to Be the Wizard

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Off to Be the Wizard by Scott MeyerFor months, my nemesis, the Amazon recommendation engine, kept recommending Off to Be the Wizard by Scott Meyer. Since I’m not a big fan of the fantasy genre, I resisted the urge to see what it was about. Curiosity finally got the best of me, and when I realized the book wasn’t a Harry Potter style book about sorcery, I figured it was worth adding to my reading list. It certainly didn’t hurt when it showed up on the Amazon Daily Deal list.

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Book review: Fluency

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Fluency by Jennifer Foehner WellsEven though one of my major reading themes for 2015 is to stay close to authors I know and like, it’s important to mix in a new author every now and then. I never know when I might stumble across another author to add to my trusted list. So for my most recent book, I decided to stray off the beaten path and read Fluency by Jennifer Foehner Wells. It’s a science fiction book that had shown up numerous times through the Amazon recommendation engine since its release last summer. When it showed up on Amazon’s Daily Deal list near the end of last year, I figured I would get it. It only took 8 months, but I finally got around to reading it.

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