My Summer Reading List

I've been following the collection of summer reading lists being compiled by Rebecca Blood and thought I would add my list as well. Personally, I've love reading during the summer months. Whether it's at the beach or pool or even just sitting outside on the patio in the evening, reading stacks of books can be so therapeutic.

Here is my Summer Reading List:
1. "Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die" (Chip Heath, Dan Heath)
Why do some ideas thrive while others die? And how do we improve the chances of worthy ideas? In Made to Stick, accomplished educators and idea collectors Chip and Dan Heath tackle head-on these vexing questions. Inside, the brothers Heath reveal the anatomy of ideas that stick and explain ways to make ideas stickier, such as applying the “human scale principle,” using the “Velcro Theory of Memory,” and creating “curiosity gaps.” In this indispensable guide, we discover that sticky messages of all kinds–from the infamous “kidney theft ring” hoax to a coach’s lessons on sportsmanship to a vision for a new product at Sony–draw their power from the same six traits.

2. "The Dip: A Little Book That Teaches You When to Quit (and When to Stick)" (Seth Godin)
According to bestselling author Seth Godin, what really sets superstars apart from everyone else is the ability to escape dead ends quickly, while staying focused and motivated when it really counts.
Winners quit fast, quit often, and quit without guilt—until they commit to beating the right Dip for the right reasons. In fact, winners seek out the Dip. They realize that the bigger the barrier, the bigger the reward for getting past it. If you can become number one in your niche, you'll get more than your fair share of profits, glory, and long-term security.

3. "The Happiest Man in the World: An Account of the Life of Poppa Neutrino" (Alec Wilkinson)
The Happiest Man in the World buoyantly describes seventy-four-year-old David Pearlman, a restless and migratory soul, a mariner, a musician, a member of the Explorers Club and a friend of the San Francisco Beats, a former preacher and sign painter, a polymath, a pauper, and a football strategist for the Red Mesa Redskins of the Navajo Nation. When Pearlman was fifty, he was bitten on the hand by a dog in Mexico and for two years got so sick that he thought he would die. When he recovered, he felt so different that he decided he needed a new name. He began calling himself Poppa Neutrino, after the itinerant particle that is so small it can hardly be detected. To Neutrino, the particle represents the elements of the hidden life that assert themselves discreetly.

4. "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Book 7)" (J. K. Rowling)
J. K. Rowling's seventh and final book of her blockbuster Harry Potter

5. "Everything Is Miscellaneous: The Power of the New Digital Disorder" (David Weinberger)
The book touches on such subjects as the folksonomy (or folk taxonomy), collaborative bookmarking, tagging, and the Semantic Web. Some of the websites mentioned as embodying different aspects of this move to digitally categorized information include Wikipedia, Amazon.com, Google Maps, del.icio.us and Flickr.

6. "Living in a Foreign Language: A Memoir of Food, Wine, and Love in Italy" (Michael Tucker)
The actor Michael Tucker and his wife, the actress Jill Eikenberry, having sent their last child off to college, were vacationing in Italy when they happened upon a small cottage nestled in the Umbrian countryside. The three-hundred-fifty-year-old rustico sat perched on a hill in the verdant Spoleto valley amid an olive grove and fruit trees of every kind. For the Tuckers, it was literally love at first sight, and the couple purchased the house without testing the water pressure or checking for signs of termites. Shedding the vestiges of their American life, Michael and Jill endeavored to learn the language, understand the nuances of Italian culture, and build a home in this new chapter of their lives.

7. "Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future" (Bill McKibben)
Most of us still think that we are living in a world where "more" and "better" are two sides of the same coin. In this Adam Smith realm, economic growth is the first imperative. Bill McKibben agrees that this "more is better" philosophy helped fuel unprecedented prosperity and ease, but he insists that the real world can no longer sustain such unlimited expansion: "Growth is no longer making more people wealthier; instead it is generating inequality and insecurity. And growth is bumping against physical limits, like climate change and peak oil, so profound that continuing to expand may be impossible or even dangerous." McKibben salvages this potential jeremiad with specific guidelines for moving beyond growth into what he calls a deep economy and a deeper humanity

8. "Incognito Street: How Travel Made Me a Writer" (Barbara Sjoholm)
Barbara Sjoholm arrived in London in the winter of 1970 at the age of twenty. Like countless young Americans in that tumultuous time, she wanted to leave a country at war and explore Europe. Over the next three years, she lived in Barcelona, hitchhiked around Spain, and studied at the University of Granada, finding odd jobs to make ends meet. Set on becoming a writer, she read everything from Colette to Dickens to Borges, changing her style and her subject every few weeks, and gradually found her voice.

9. "Mouse Guard Volume One: Fall 1152 (Mouse Guard)" (David Petersen)
In the world of Mouse Guard, mice struggle to live safely and prosper amongst harsh conditions and a host of predators. Thus the Mouse Guard was formed: more than just soldiers that fight off intruders, they are guides for common mice looking to journey without confrontation from one hidden village to another. The Guard patrol borders, find safeways and paths through dangerous territories and treacherous terrain, watch weather patterns, and keep the mouse territories free of predatory infestation. They do so with fearless dedication so that they might not just exist, but truly live. Saxon, Kenzie and Lieam, three such Guardsmice, are dispatched to find a missing merchant mouse that never arrived at his destination. Their search for the missing mouse reveals much more than they expect, as they stumble across a traitor in the Guard's own ranks.

10. "Stumbling on Happiness" (Daniel Gilbert)
Humans are good at planning, communicating, creating, and building; but we suck at previewing our futures, much less controlling them. Harvard psychology professor Daniel Gilbert has spent a lifetime investigating the powers and limits of foresight. In Stumbling on Happiness, he explains why the grass grows greener until you get there and tells us why unhappiness never lasts as long as we think it will. Brilliantly original, yet solidly grounded in science.

There you have it! A list of books that range from business to graphic novels. If you've read any of these books would love to hear your comments (of course with no spoilers).

Finally, what are you reading this summer? Have you compiled your own list? Leave a comment and share it.

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