How Do You Pick a Book to Meet Your Needs?

It seems many people read good books at the end of 2018. Several blog posts last week focused on recommended books. It made me wonder…how in the world do people pick a book with all the recommendations and content circling around us? More importantly, how do you pick a book to meet your needs?

Joan Garry, author of Guide to Nonprofit Leadership- Because Nonprofits are Messy, recommended a book based on something that drives her crazy. She described the pain of enduring “wood grain analysis” meetings where everything discussed could have been shared in a memo. She found Priya Parker’s book The Art of Gathering Why We Meet and Why it Matters as the perfect solution to planning, delivering and participating in meetings and gatherings.

I’ve sat through plenty of those wood grain meetings so there is some intrigue to Parker’s book. In addition, reading the overview of the book pulled me in…”A bold new approach to how we gather that will transform the ways we spend our time together–at work, at home, in our communities, and beyond.” A book for work and home….I’m hooked. Perhaps we pick books by catchy marketing language that draws us in?

She Negotiates, points us towards books in her recent post. As I skimmed the titles, one book offered to me help “say less, ask more & change the way you lead forever.” This book sounded like it would help leaders solve the ongoing challenge of asking open-ended questions. Evidently author Michael Bungay Stanier has specific ideas to help all of us be more effective communicators in The Coaching Habit. Perhaps we need a little pain in our lives to select a professional development book?

You probably have your own list of recommended professional development books. However, I’m most curious about HOW you selected those books. What do you look for? Were you looking to solve a problem? Learn something totally new? Deepen your skill set? Laugh or cry? What makes you say no to a title, not interested? Or better yet, what makes you return a book you bought thinking it was going to be great? Confession, I returned three unread books to Amazon today. Not the right fit.

Richard Ackerman, a friend, author and Professor of Educational Leadership at UMaine gave me a wonderful filter for selecting books. Richard and I use to walk on the beach in Magnolia, MA and talk about good books. There we discussed his concept of the “one idea” book. He described these as “books where in the first chapter you get the idea” and the rest of the book is filler. (And you rarely finish these books because it just feels like repeating the same idea over and over). We both agreed we were not attracted to one idea books.

I’m sure you have your own criteria for selecting books to read. Perhaps it’s as simple, of small enough to carry in a backpack or lightweight! What are your criteria?

What is a book you’d recommend we all read in 2019? And, HOW did you pick that book from all the other books on the shelves? What made you select and recommend this book?

I’ll share any titles that people share next week.

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