📚 The Reading Journal #021

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The average number of books read per year by an American is 12.

Although some of these facts about reading may appear grim, Americans still read a fair amount of books. The average for women in the US is 14 books in a year, while the median across all populations is four per year. 

So, if you read more than four books a year, you’re reading more than half the country. 

📷 Bookshelf Humble Brag

📝 Note

• Want to show off your library? Send us a picture to be featured in the Reading Journal. 

• Looking to read some of our previous Journals? You can find them here.

📚 Staff Pick of the Week

Elon Musk by Ashlee Vance

Love him or hate him, Elon Musk is seemingly in the news everyday. Even more so after the Twitter acquisition. 

Elon Musk, who has been hailed as one of this generation's most creative businessmen, is known for aiming for the moon—or, more specifically, Mars. He has founded a number of industry-disrupting companies. This biography, which offers fresh perspectives on Musk's life and businesses, was written by technology journalist Ashlee Vance after spending close to 50 hours interviewing Musk and speaking with about 300 of his friends and associates.

The book covers Musk's early life and businesses, his positions with Tesla and SpaceX, followed by SolarCity. It talks about the qualities and leadership strategies that made Musk successful throughout his entrepreneurial career. Along the road, it provides you the most recent details about Musk and his businesses as well as viewpoints from other business success and management professionals.

Elon Musk has been recommended by the likes of Joe Rogan, Anu Hariharan, Mark Manson and 12 others.

🎥 Reading Talk's

Amazon

📈 Rising Quickly - Week of November 14, 2022

Quit: The Power of Knowing When to Walk Away by Annie Duke

Business leaders, with millions of dollars down the drain, struggle to abandon a new app or product that just isn’t working. Governments, caught in a hopeless conflict, believe that the next tactic will finally be the one that wins the war. And in our own lives, we persist in relationships or careers that no longer serve us. Why? According to Annie Duke, in the face of tough decisions, we’re terrible quitters. And that is significantly holding us back.

In Quit, Duke teaches you how to get good at quitting. Drawing on stories from elite athletes like Mount Everest climbers, founders of leading companies like Stewart Butterfield, the CEO of Slack, and top entertainers like Dave Chappelle, Duke explains why quitting is integral to success, as well as strategies for determining when to hold em, and when to fold em, that will save you time, energy, and money. You’ll learn:

• How the paradox of quitting influences decision making: If you quit on time, you will feel you quit early

• What forces work against good quitting behavior, such as escalation commitment, desire for certainty, and status quo bias

• How to think in expected value in order to make better decisions, as well as other best practices, such as increasing flexibility in goal-setting, establishing “quitting contracts,” anticipating optionality, and conducting premortems and backcasts

Whether you’re facing a make-or-break business decision or life-altering personal choice, mastering the skill of quitting will help you make the best next move.

🪄 Most Talked About Fiction  - Week of November 14, 2022

The Passenger by Cormac McCarthy

1980, PASS CHRISTIAN, MISSISSIPPI: It is three in the morning when Bobby Western zips the jacket of his wetsuit and plunges from the Coast Guard tender into darkness. His dive light illuminates the sunken jet, nine bodies still buckled in their seats, hair floating, eyes devoid of speculation. Missing from the crash site are the pilot’s flight bag, the plane’s black box, and the tenth passenger. But how? A collateral witness to machinations that can only bring him harm, Western is shadowed in body and spirit—by men with badges; by the ghost of his father, inventor of the bomb that melted glass and flesh in Hiroshima; and by his sister, the love and ruin of his soul.

⭐️ A message from Leader's Lens

Some leaders are born and some are made. But no leader is perfect.

Leader’s Lens is a weekly newsletter written by veteran leadership coach, Jacob Espinoza. For years, he’s worked alongside executive teams and Fortune 500 CEOs across the country.

Each week, you’ll receive a newsletter from him with action items, leadership deep dives, and a curated list of resources.

Whether you’re an aspiring leader, a new manager, or a seasoned executive, this newsletter will help you uplift your teams and advance your company’s trajectory.

Subscribe to Leader’s Lens today.

📚 Most Talked About Non-Fiction  - Week of November 14, 2022

The Sounds of Life: How Digital Technology Is Bringing Us Closer to the Worlds of Animals and Plants by Karen Bakker

The natural world teems with remarkable conversations, many beyond human hearing range. Scientists are using groundbreaking digital technologies to uncover these astonishing sounds, revealing vibrant communication among our fellow creatures across the Tree of Life.

At once meditative and scientific, The Sounds of Life shares fascinating and surprising stories of nonhuman sound, interweaving insights from technological innovation and traditional knowledge. We meet scientists using sound to protect and regenerate endangered species from the Great Barrier Reef to the Arctic and the Amazon. We discover the shocking impacts of noise pollution on both animals and plants. We learn how artificial intelligence can decode nonhuman sounds, and meet the researchers building dictionaries in East African Elephant and Sperm Whalish. At the frontiers of innovation, we explore digitally mediated dialogues with bats and honeybees. Technology often distracts us from nature, but what if it could reconnect us instead?

The Sounds of Life offers hope for environmental conservation and affirms humanity’s relationship with nature in the digital age. After learning about the unsuspected wonders of nature’s sounds, we will never see walks outdoors in the same way again.

🆕 New and Noteworthy

The Greatness Mindset: Unlock the Power of Your Mind and Live Your Best Life Today by Lewis Howes

Through his New York Times best-selling book and podcast The School of Greatness, Greatness Academy, and inspirational events, entrepreneur Lewis Howes has provided millions worldwide with the tools they need to define their mission, craft specific goals, and develop a game plan to get the results they want. In The Greatness Mindset, Lewis takes his results-driven system one step further by taking a deep dive into the mindset shifts you need to truly see and acknowledge your own greatness and allow it to reach its fullest potential.

👀 In Case You Missed It

✍️ Quote of the Week

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