Style: Non-fiction
The Outrun – Amy Liptrot
by
The Outrun follows the author as she deals with recovery from alcoholism. Part of her journey is heading back to the quiet island she grew up on, Orkney, and then going to an even quieter island to live in a seasonal cabin that is vacant for the winter “off” season. I enjoyed Amy’s reflections on…
Kill it with Fire – Marianne Bellotti
by
Kill it with Fire is all about how to manage legacy software projects. How do you determine if you need to rewrite it? How do you keep a team motivated while working on a legacy project? How do you stop a current project from becoming legacy full of dead code ready to die? I found…
Clear Thinking – Shane Parrish
by
Shane Parrish, of Farnham Street fame, brings us a book that is intended to help us think clearly. The first half is all about defining the enemies of clear thinking and the second is about putting clear thinking into practice in our lives. While there are many good tidbits to take away from the book…
Slow Productivity – Cal Newport
by
Slow Productivity is Cal Newport’s 4th book looking at how to be productive and maximize your career. As such it blends portions of all the previous books, adding a few bits and rehashing many of the same principles explore in earlier books. As the title suggests it focuses on working a slower pace, on fewer…
Smart Brevity – Jim VandeHei, Mike Allen, Roy Schwartz
by
Smart Brevity is here to teach you how to cater your communication to the over-stimulated worker, and community, of today. There are 4 Core ideas for the writing system presented. The authors really like their bullet points and figure that’s the correct way to do your communication. Their strongest point is that you probably write…
The Cost of Being a Girl – Yasemin Besen-Cassino
by
In The Cost of Being a Girl, Besen-Cassino, looks at how part-time employment in the teenage years affects the income of teenage girls vs boys. The biggest takeaway is similar to what I’ve read in the past about wages for women, they make less, are asked to do more emotional labour, and get penalized if…
The Color of Law – Richard Rothstein
by
The Color of Law looks at how redlining affected the wealth of Black Americans after Word War 2. From not letting Black Vetrans get the financing that all Vetrans were supposed to be eligible for, to breaking up Black neighbourhoods for “public projects” this is a sobering look at how white people stole wealth from…
The Promise of Access – Daniel Greene
by
Daniel Greene looks at the politically expedient idea that the problem with the workforce is that they don’t have access to computers (technology) and the skills to use said electronic devices. This lets politicians off the hook in addressing the structural problems (poverty, homelessness) that contributes to lack of work and skill development and simply…
Ruined by Reading – Sharon Schwartz
by
Ruined by reading was a very different book than I expected. I didn’t expect this memoir on the affect of reading to the author’s life to be a keep but it continually asked thought provoking questions about the nature of power and our imagination. Schwartz questions the very nature and content of a book and…
Dark PR – Grant Ennis
by
Dark PR walks readers through all the “framing” companies do to minimize their responsibility so that they can keep doing the terrible shit they are doing. From car companies showing us all their “magic” features that will save lives, to blaming some random person walking on the street for not being visible enough (victim blaming)…