On Leading Well

My Holiday Reading List

Written by

Ken

in

,

Whew! The past few months have flown by. On December 8, our global digital strategies, operations, products and services teams marked the 100th day since significantly restructuring. To everyone’s credit, we’ve seen a surge of early wins in product release speed, quality of our digital offerings, analytics dashboards, and most importantly, a much richer stakeholder engagement process. We still have a long way to go.

It’s been an exciting and demanding time. In spite of the pace, I don’t find myself tired or fatigued. Rather, my soul is hungry for richer fare than articles on best practices in digital maturity. This week I am beginning to taper my schedule to allow for a season of reflection.

Over the next few weeks here’s what I’ll be reading (or re-reading):

  1. Every Good Endeavor: Connecting Your Work to God’s Work by Tim Keller
  2. Relational Leadership: A Biblical Model for Leadership Service by Walter C. Wright
  3. Telling the Truth: The Gospel as Tragedy, Comedy and Fairy Tale by Frederick Buechner
  4. The Culture Map: Breaking Through the Invisible Boundaries of Global Business by Erin Meyer
  5. The Contemplative Pastor and Working the Angles: The Shape of Pastoral Integrity by Eugene Peterson
  6. Leadership by James MacGregor Burns

How do you pull away and reflect? What’s on your reading list?

Comments

9 responses to “My Holiday Reading List”

  1. Karl

    Looks like a good reading list. I read Telling the Truth a couple of years ago and found it very good.

  2. Mike Adamson

    Nice Ken. Interesting that I just put together my 2016 reading list last weekend. I obviously read much more slowly than you since this is for 12 months. One note: Telling the Truth is my all time favorite spiritual growth book. A bi-annual read. My list:

    Non-Fiction
    Between the World and Me: A father’s notes to his son on growing up black (Ta-Nehisi Coates)
    Citizen (Finish it)
    The Road to Character (David Brooks)
    The Conservative Heart (Arthur Brooks)
    Creativity
    Out on the Wire: Storytelling Secrets of Radio (Abel)
    The Shepherds Life: Journals of an English shepherd (Rebanks)
    Doomed to Succeed – America and Israel from Truman- Obama
    A Street Divided: Stories from an Israeli – Palestinian neighborhood in Jerusalem
    The Devils Chessboard: Allan Dulles, CIA and the Rise of America’s Secret Government (Talbot)
    The Thing Explainer: Complicated things in simple words (Munroe)

    Spiritual Growth
    Bible in a Year plan
    Knowing God (Packer – annual reread for QTs)
    Secrets in the Dark (Buechner – reread during QTs)
    Miracle (Metaxis – finish it)
    Called to be Saints (Smith – finish it)
    Telling the Truth (Buechner – biannual reread)
    Onward: Engaging the Culture without losing the gospel (Moore)
    Commentary on the book of Hebrews (Schreiner)
    Awe: Why it Matters (Tripp)
    Lonely Man of Faith (Recommended by David Brooks)

    Fiction (Jan – June)
    The Third Target (Rosenburg)
    All the Light We Cannot See
    One Russian Epic: W&P, Anna K, Bros K or Crime and Punishment
    The Rogue Lawyer (Grisham)
    Various Harlan Coben and Lee Child mysteries when traveling

  3. Ken

    Thanks for the extra motivation on Buechner, Karl.

  4. Ken

    Wow, Mike, I feel like I just stumbled into a secret treasure trove. Thanks for sharing the list. [cut-paste]. Enjoy your reading!

  5. Travis

    I like the book lists. How much flexibility do you give yourselves to stumble on a new book. I think of three good books I’ve read this past month that I didn’t know about three months ago until someone recommended (Nik Ripken cost of obedience) and just picked one up randomly because I liked the idea (thinking fast and slow by Daniel Kahneman and also Amplified leadership by Dan reiland) how much flexibility do you have or Ken do you go month to month what you are looking to read.

  6. Mike Adamson

    Travis — total flexibility. Life and God’s working are always dynamic.

  7. Travis

    That is good. I figured there is flexibility. It does make me think more about where I am wanting to grow and see change and read towards that. I read about a book or two a week (no highlighting, just information into the brain with the hope it comes out at the right moment) and I just scroll through all the books I have and see which one scratches an itch I have that day. I am going to plan the half the books for the next two months and be more intentional. Thanks

  8. jeremylukens

    That’s a good list. “Telling the Truth” has been on my to-read list for a while. I’m not sure how much reading I’ll get done over the next few weeks, but the next books I plan to tackle are:

    Fiction:
    “Lila” by Marilynne Robinson (the 2 best novels I read this year were both written by her)

    Nonfiction:
    “Becoming a Contagious Christian” by Bill Hybels and Lee Strobel

    I also want to re-read Dallas Willard’s “Hearing God” soon.

  9. Miheret Tilahun

    Thank you Ken for sharing this.

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