The new year often comes with a bunch of resolutions and planning, and one of my plans is to keep reading more and more.
After going through endless lists and suggestions, here are 5 books I’m incredibly excited to be reading this year:
1. Scramble: How agile strategy can build epic brands in record time – by Marty Neumeier
Marty Neumeier, author of THE BRAND GAP and other business bestsellers, has written a book that leaps off the shelf–right into your pounding heart.
“One rainy night in December, young CEO David Stone is inexplicably called back to the office. The company’s chairman tells him that the board members have reached the end of their patience. If David can’t produce a viable turnaround plan in five weeks, he’s out of a job. The problem is, he’s already used every trick in the book and nothing has worked. His only hope is to try something new. But what?”
2. The Gift: Creativity and the Artist in the Modern World – by Lewis Hyde
By now a modern classic, The Gift is a brilliantly orchestrated defense of the value of creativity and of its importance in a culture increasingly governed by money and overrun with commodities.
This book is even more necessary today than when it first appeared. An illuminating and transformative book, and completely original in its view of the world, The Gift is cherished by artists, writers, musicians, and thinkers.
3. POCKET FULL OF DO – by Chris Do
Pocket Full of Do sums up more than two decades of entrepreneurship, teaching, creativity, coaching, and learning, scaled-down into potent, bite-sized lessons that can be ingested quickly. It’s a treasure trove of ideas and observations (on creativity, mindset, pricing, marketing, relationships, and sales) that will help you disrupt the thought patterns that are keeping you from reaching your full potential.
It’s made by Chris Do, founder of one of the most valuable creative business youtube channels out there, The Futur.
4. Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In – by Roger Fisher & William Ury
Another true classic. Since its original publication nearly thirty years ago, Getting to Yes has helped millions of people learn a better way to negotiate. One of the primary business texts of the modern era, it is based on the work of the Harvard Negotiation Project, a group that deals with all levels of negotiation and conflict resolution.
5. Liquid Life – by Zygmunt Bauman
Suggested by the brilliant Esther Perel, ‘Liquid life’ is the kind of life commonly lived in our contemporary, liquid-modern society. Liquid life cannot stay on course, as liquid-modern society cannot keep its shape for long. Liquid life is a precarious life, lived under conditions of constant uncertainty.
This and other challenges of life in a liquid-modern society are traced and unraveled in the successive chapters of this new book by one of the most brilliant and original social thinkers of our time.
Enjoy reading – Feel free to write me back about these.
George Kroustallis // Minorstep