Well, it feels like I’m constantly playing catch up with the books on my list that I want to read and that list just got a whole lot longer. I’m a regular listener of the podcast, “The Cranky Middle Manager” and the latest episode #125 is a great discussion with Jack Covert about the best business books list of 2007 by 800 CEO Read.com. I’ve only read a couple from this year’s list but many are already on my list to read for next year after hearing about them on this podcast or from other’s recommendations. Most of the books I’ve read are recommended books and books from previous years “best of” lists so you can view more of them here with a book review search.

There are a lot of great books in this list as well this year, each with a short description and obviously very high rankings so no need to hunt for reviews for individual titles at the bookstore or online. I absolutely love these types of recommended lists since there are books for just about everyone, which gives me a lot of knowledge as a manager to make an easy recommendation for any particular topic even if I haven’t read it myself, yet still trusting it will be a great book.

Just for quick reference, here were the top four books listed:

The Dream Manager Matthew Kelly

The Last Tycoons William D. Cohan

Made to Stick Chip and Dan Heath

Strengths Finder 2.0 Tom Rath

I hope others will get as much value out of this list as I know I will next year!

Posted by Mike King under Business | 2 Comments »

I have quite a few great books I’ve reviewed here and its not because I simply get lucky and mostly find 4 or 5 star books. I do some research before I get a book. There is always other people who have already read any book so you might as well use their ratings and comments to determine if you really want to take the time to read it. There is no reason to read a book at random and have no idea if it will be worthwhile or not.

So, I recommend that you never start at the library or bookstore to find a book. Look up the books you want and keep a list before you ever go to the library or bookstore. Its far easier to lookup books online to review ratings and other reader’s comments beforehand that in the store. Unless you read hundreds of books a year and have time to read books you DON’T like in order to find the ones you love, you need a good method to find the books to read. There are thousands of books available and unfortunately a lot of bad books to avoid. If you strictly limit your books to ones that have maximum ratings or are recommended to you personally then you will likely enjoy reading more. I believe this is why a lot of people simply don’t read and instead get frustrated that the books they do read are not worth the time.

There are so many great book resource sites out there including the big stores like Amazon, Chapters and B&N, as well as book clubs and review sites like Google Books and Library Thing. These sites offer excellent search tools to find what you are looking for, related books and of course, ratings and reviews about nearly any book written. If you simply only read books with great ratings and reviews, you will find you get a lot more knowledge and enjoyment out of your time spent. I know that personally all the top rated books on my list were also highly recommended and only a few are ones that are highly recommended but I didn’t really enjoy. So, I’ll continue to review books I read as I hope they are useful to some of my readers, as I know most of the books on my list are there only because I’ve read other’s reviews of them as well and its a pleasure to give that similar knowledge back!

Posted by Mike King under Learning | 2 Comments »

I’m writing this article since I feel that it wasn’t until fairly recently in my life that I really felt I have learned some important things.

I had always been a quick learner in school growing up and especially with computers and technology! I got pretty use to doing well in my jobs and often thought I knew quite a bit to succeed. Unfortunately, I was completely ignorant of a lot of knowledge I was blatantly missing out on. Once I learned about them, they changed my life. These two things I hold great value in now, were learning to control my sleep to maximize my life, and learning to read. That’s right, learning to read. I’m got a post lined up about the sleep topic I’ll get online in the next few days. This post however, is about learning to read.

Its not that I literally didn’t know how to read, I just couldn’t read well. I never enjoyed books because I couldn’t keep my focus on them so my mind would wander and I would find myself daydreaming and thinking of other things. So, I would either simply get frustrated by the book and stop or wouldn’t get anything out of the book since I couldn’t stay focused on it. So, this led me to not reading a single book after high school until I was about 28. Sure, I read lots of short articles and magazines and things online, I just would never sit down and read. Then it all changed. I started listening to a few motivational speakers (Steven Covey and Brian Tracy come to mind) and they each recommended LOTS of reading. So, I went online and did some research about the average reader and found out that not only was I reading less than any averages I could find, I also found out about the huge variation in reading speeds. I took a simple speed reading online test online and was at an appauling reading speed of only 175 words per minute. This shocked me so I kept doing research. I found out my slow reading speed was preventing my reading from keeping my mind active and stimulated by the content so it would wander and focus on other thoughts and things in my surrounding, even while reading. I learned that by reading faster Continue Reading »

Posted by Mike King under Learning | 1 Comment »

LearnOutLoad.com is a great resource for free audio books online.

Posted by Mike King under Learning | No Comments »