12 Books for 2010

My white whale (full disclosure: I’ve never read Moby Dick)

Well over a year ago, I wrote about how I wanted to read more books and fewer blogs. My rationale was that the long form of books allows me to fully absorb their subjects, whereas I don’t live with blog posts long enough for them to leave a lasting impression.

I’m pretty sure Nicholas Carr talked about this in his article Is Google Making Us Stupid?. I’m not sure because I haven’t read the article because it’s too long; I plan to hold out on reading it to maintain this irony.

More recently, Robin Sloan artfully illuminated how the economic concept of “stock and flow” applies to writing; the idea being that writers benefit by producing little bits of ephemeral content continually (flow) while simultaneously working on larger, more permanent, works. I think the metaphor applies to content consumption as well as production.

I haven’t kept track of my efforts to read more books, but I know that I still want to read more books and fewer blogs. To that end, here are 12 books that I want to read this year. This is a New Year’s resolution for my brain, while my other New Year’s resolution is for my body.

I hope that writing them down and publicly announcing my goal will encourage me to put the iPhone down and pick them up.

These aren’t in any kind of order.

1. The Organization Man — William H. Whyte Jr.

   This was a landmark book when it was published in 1965, and I’m hoping it’s still good. I put it on my Amazon wish list on a whim, and my mom gave me a first edition printing of it for Christmas as a result. I love her.

   I’ve become very interested in organizations (particularly the creative destruction of organizations) since grad school, and I’m curious to learn about how post WWII organizations were perceived as they came about. Also, check out Whyte’s steez.

2. Nudge — Richard H. Thaler and Cass R. Sunstein

   This is tangentially related to my interest in organizations and policy making, as it examines the most vexing component of organizations: the rational human being.

   I’m a few chapters in. It’s a fun book. It’d go nicely with some Camus.

   Finished on Feb 10th. Overlong and sometimes boring, but very worthwhile. Its ideas are settling in nicely.

3. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

   Finished sometime mid January

4. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
5. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
6. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

   J.K. Rowling deserves every penny she’s earned. I’m glad Shan convinced me to read these books. I love them.

7. Started: Information Dashboard Design — Stephen Few

   Marti Hearst recommended this to me. I don’t expect anyone to want to read it with me, but Few deserves credit for the cheeky intro to the book’s acknowledgements:

   Without a doubt I owe the greatest debt of gratitude to the many software vendors who have done so much to make this book necessary by failing to address or even contemplate the visual design need of their dashboards. Their kind disregard for visual design has given me focus, ignited my passion, and guaranteed my livelihood for years to come.

   Ha!

8. The Ownership of Enterprise — Henry Hansmann

   This was a suggested text from a class I took in grad school called, simply, Organizations. I didn’t buy it until over a year after graduation, when I realized that I continued to think about Organizations more than any other class I’d taken.

   Hansmann “explains why different industries and different national economies exhibit different patterns of ownership forms.” I’m especially interested in (finally) reading this because the 2009 Nobel Prize for Economics was awarded for similar research.

9. Let My People Go Surfing — Yvon Chouinard

   A memoir by the founder and owner of Patagonia, the company. I like surfing, I like business, and I admire Patagonia—both the place and the company.

   Finished on Feb 20th. A major surprise. I expected it to be a fluffy memoir, but this is a serious book about business, craft, the environment, and morality. Very inspiring. Highly recommended.

10. Started: Understanding Comics — Scott McCloud

    A comic about how comics work. I’m 50 pages in, and it’s one of the most enlightening books I’ve ever read (no hyperbole).

11. Here Comes Everybody — Clay Shirky

    I tend to think of Shirky as an Internet media guy, but I’m approaching this thinking of him has an Internet organizations guy.

12. The Design of Everyday Things — Donald A. Norman

    This has been on my stack for years. It’s time I developed a theoretical basis to support (and occasionally quell) my design instincts.

PS – You should read some of these books with me.