In the last few months I’ve started going to the library again, after spending most of 2020 reading from my personal collection. It’s been great to try a wider variety of books than the ones I tend to purchase for my collection. I don’t own a lot of business books, for example, but I’ve been into reading them lately. Finding good ones is a challenge; most business books make a few relatively obvious points and fill out the text with fluff.

I’ve read a few recently that I like:

• Robert Cialdini: Influence: the Psychology of Persuasion. If this was published today it would probably be a lot more fluff, but it held my interest. Some parts reminded me of another book I enjoyed, Priceless: The Myth of Fair Value by William Poundstone.
• David Epstein: Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World. I read an excerpt in The Guardian when this book was published a year ago, and put it on my list. The text lives up to its intriguing subtitle.
• L. David Marquet: Turn the Ship Around!: A True Story of Turning Followers into Leaders. This is the most business book-y of the three. If it was condensed it would probably take less than 100 pages. But it has great lessons about empowerment.