
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?