52 weeks for 52 books

52 Books for 52 Weeks is a personal project that explores the power of books. It's an attempt to read a book a week, see the world through someone else's eyes and learn something new.

[52for52]

Writing for Social Scientists: How to Start and Finish Your Thesis, Book, or Article: Second Edition (Chicago Guides to Writing, Editing, and Publishing)

Howard S. Becker

Not the writing bible.

★★★☆☆

I expected so much more from this book, mostly because everyone says it is the bible of scientific writing and I hoped to learn a fair bit from it. It makes some interesting points about why most people struggle with putting words on paper, but the only helpful technique that I learnt (but haven't tried yet) relates to trying to decide what your main story/topic for a paper is. If you think you can't decide between all of your options, try to write 100 different ideas. By the 20th idea you'll realise that you have only a few topics/stories you are actually interested in/considering and that should make the decision easier.

[52for52]

Organizational Change and Innovation Processes: Theory and Methods for Research

Marshall Scott Poole, Andrew Van de Ven, Kevin Dooley, Michael E. Holmes

Systematic brilliance.

★★★★★

I started reading this book for work, but I absolutely enjoyed every single page of it and decided it was worth to include in my leisure reading bookshelf.

It is an incredible summary of Poole’s and Van de Ven’s work from the Minnesota Innovation Research Program and a great, very practical and applicable guide for anyone interested in the process of emergence, change and innovation.

[52for52]

Eleanor & Park

Rainbow Rowell

Lovely.

★★★★★

An absolutely beautiful story about innocent love, stollen glances, and being a tormented teenager.

[52for52]

The Introvert Advantage: Making the Most of Your Inner Strengths

Marti Olsen Laney Psy.D.

Slightly insulting.

★★☆☆☆

I expected so much more from this book. Maybe that is part of the reason why I was so disappointed. Not to mention that it is slightly insulting in its descriptions of introverts as slow. But there was one thing I learnt from the book: conserve and plan how you use your energy as an introvert. You don’t have to wait to recharge your batteries until you are absolutely exhausted. You can be preemptive and proactive in spending, conserving, and recharging your energy.

[52for52]

Daily Rituals: How Artists Work

Mason Currey

Creativity. Magic. Hard work.

★★★★☆

An absolutely brilliant collection of inspiring and intriguing stories of the daily rituals of some of the most creative and innovative people to ever walk on the face of Earth. My favourite aspect of the book is the fact that it defies the myth of the creative individual who waits for inspiration and works only when the muse enlightens him/her. Instead, it showcases that creativity is the result of hard work.

[52for52]

Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead

Sheryl Sandberg

Women in the workplace.

★★★☆☆

For the longest time I resisted reading this book because I don't believe that every woman on earth wants to be a COO or CEO, which was my expectation of the book. In fairness, she admits that it is not every woman's dream to be a COO and instead focuses on those women who actually want to have high those types of jobs and how to get there.

It is a good mix of personal stories and straightforward writing.

[52for52]

Effectuation: Elements of Entrepreneurial Expertise (New Horizons in Entrepreneurship series)

Saras D. Sarasvathy

Organisational design logic.

★★★★☆

Effectuation is by far one of my favourite logics/theories of entrepreneurship and the book was a delightful read. It is a must read for anyone interested in entrepreneurship or considering starting his/her own for-profit or non-profit organisation.

Effectuation is a microfoundational design logic that guides entrepreneurs to create possible effects based on what they currently have available, what they can afford to lose, how they can leverage surprises and contingencies, and who is willing to make a pre-commitment to jointly create the effect. The effectual approach starts with a set of available means that are used to create possible effects in a contingent and collaborative fashion.

[52for52]

The Defining Decade: Why Your Twenties Matter--And How to Make the Most of Them Now

Meg Jay

Attempts in usefulness.

★★★☆☆

I had very high expectations about this book. Unfortunately, I didn't learn anything new. Maybe if I didn't spend my days around psychologists it would have been more informative and inspiring.

However, I agree with the point Meg Jay makes about our culture trivialising probably the most defining decade of adulthood and young people wasting our 20s. Several people I spoke to said the book was provocative, inspiring, and empowering with all the tools and tips provided. I guess it can be a good kick in the butt on topics such as work, careers, relationships, etc.

[52for52]

Anna Karenina

Leo Tolstoy

Russian tragedy.

★★★★☆

It took me a year to finish this book, but it is a tragic story written (or to be more precise translated) beautifully.

[52for52]

Travelling Lights

Vickie Johnstone

Wanderlust.

★★★☆☆

A collection of poems on a topic that is very close to my heart - wandering. Some of the poems are very reflective of my personal experiences and have become absolute favourites. These include Mother, Farewell, Hope, and Moving On.

[52for52]

Risk, Uncertainty and Profit (Classic Reprint)

Frank H. Knight

Entrepreneurial opportunities.

★★★☆☆

Not an easy book to read for people with short attention spans, but definitely a good foundation for anyone interested in the difference between risk and uncertainty as sources of entrepreneurial opportunities for profit, not just wages. According to Knight, entrepreneurial profits arise “out of the inherent, absolute unpredictability of things, out of the sheer brute fact that the results of human activity cannot be anticipated and then only in so far as even a probability calculation in regard to them is impossible and meaningless.”

[52for52]

30 Things Every Woman Should Have and Should Know by the Time She's 30

Pamela Redmond Satran

★★☆☆☆

Cheap chick flick glamour.

I was very excited to find out that Pamela Redmond Satran’s list of “30 Things Every Woman Should Have and Should Know by the Time She's 30” had inspired a book. I bought the Kindle version almost immediately after I found about its existence and had very high expectations about it. However, except for a few inspiring and/or funny essays, the book is a disappointing set of blog posts that seem to have come out straight from the pages of Cosmopolitan or Glamour, or a chick flick film. Quite unfortunate considering the previous work of some of the authors.

[52for52]

Emma Lyonna

Alexandre. Dumas

★★★★★

Tragic.

The last time I cried reading a book was 8 or 10 years ago when I finished the d’Artagnan romances. "Emma Lyonna" also brought tears to my eyes for very much the same reasons - Dumas’ incredible talent to create great characters that readers fall in love with and make the readers part of a tragic story at the intersection of history and biography.

[52for52]

The Coming Prosperity: How Entrepreneurs Are Transforming the Global Economy

Philip Auerswald

★★★★☆

Optimistic

Finally a book that looks at the future through an optimistic lens based on the accumulation of technological, social, financial, environmental and global changes from the past few centuries and the opportunities such changes offer us. The key to taking advantage of these opportunities is entrepreneurship. "The Coming Prosperity" is a new kind of economics book that combines analysis of trends with stories of bold entrepreneurs such as Victoria Hale, Karim Khoja and Leila Janah.

[52for52]

The Power of Pull: How Small Moves, Smartly Made, Can Set Big Things in Motion

John Hagel III

★★☆☆☆

Repetitive.

I had heard relatively good things about this book so I was excited to read it when I saw it as recommended reading for a summer class. However, I was really disappointed by the circular logic, repetitiveness and lack of novel examples. Not to mention that the book itself is an inadequate summary of 87% of the books I've read for this project.

There are a few nuggets of smart thinking and inspiration in the book, but they are buried deep under repetitive paragraphs and chapters.

[52for52]

La San-Felice (French Edition)

Alexandre Dumas Père

★★★★☆

Typical Dumas.

Alexandre Dumas Pere is one of my favorite authors. He has been one of my favorites since I was 10 or 11 years old. It was a very interesting experience to read one of his novels after a 6-year break and it helped me remember what I love about his work. La San Felice isn't one of his famous works, but it is written in the typical Dumas fashion of elaborate storytelling that connects numerous people and their lives.

Now off to finding "Emma Lyonna", the sequel of "La San Felice".

[52for52]

Thinking, Fast and Slow

Daniel Kahneman

★★★★☆

Humans.

Another book by a Nobel Prize laureate. There might be a theme here.

I pre-ordered this book late last year in hopes of gaining a more complete and coherent understanding of human behavior, decisions, judgement and biases, delivered by Daniel Kahneman, a psychologist whose work has challenged the rational model of human behavior and impacted economics, public policy, medicine and politics. Mission accomplished. “Thinking, Fast and Slow” provided a coherent framework that allows me to understand my prior pieces of knowledge about human behavior beyond knowing what people will do in situation X or Y, but also understand why this happens and what might cause different behavior than expected.

Daniel Kahneman brings together biases, System 1 and System 2, Humans and Econs, framing, loss aversion, risk seeking, overconfidence and many other concepts in a thorough and coherent story about us, humans.

“Thinking, Fast and Slow” is an incredible book for anyone who is interested in understanding how humans make decisions and process information. With its numerous personal examples and scientific experiments linked in a coherent story, this book is a good guide to human behavior for people who consider humans perfectly rational and for people who have basic knowledge of behavioral economics. More importantly, with its practical advice and different techniques on when to trust intuition and how to tap into the benefits of slow thinking, this is a great self-help book.

A few of my favorite takeaways are:

Cognition is embodied. We think with our bodies, not only with our brains.

Familiarity is not easily distinguished from truth.

People are unwilling to deduce the particular from the general and willing to infer the general from the particular.

Prediction matches evaluation.

Creativity is associative memory that works exceptionally well. (For more on this, read Jonah Lehrer’s “Imagine.”)