Boro ( Bor- raw) says I read only motivational books I don’t agree with that.
I struggle with reading novels which she excels at because I’d rather just watch a movie, it’s all story telling except that novels help improve your imagination and blah blah I hope to read at least a ( short, quite short) novel next year, having said that let’s begin.
I start the year usually with no plan on the amount of books I want to read, I usually don’t expect to do less than 2 books a month and if I don’t it must have been because the month was quite hectic or I chose to learn via another medium, I’m that motivated or rather used to it and I figured a long time ago that having a target of how many books to read could be more of a distraction to appreciating the process of learning for me ( I haven’t said it’s bad to have “number of books to read” goals, just do it with caution).
I choose what to learn by gravitating towards topics of my interests, January for example, I wanted to understand the origin of consulting industry (Lords of Strategy) and recent advances in technology (The Fourth Industrial Revolution) and in June I wanted to learn about recruitment (The Alliance), quite unconventional useful advice and thought processes. Sometimes it’s a recommendation from someone I know or a public figure or some website. Other times I just know I want to read a book by an author or even have the title in my head, I know that’s how I read Option B by sheryl Sandberg- weird how I lost a friend while reading the book and it really helped, there’s usually no formula or maybe the mixture of these are the formula. Some, about 4 books were books I had read before but felt I needed to read again, some books can’t just be read once.
About making out time, There are many distractions around so I have to improvise most times, scheduling reading time, reading in transit and trust me if you’re familiar with Lagos traffic, you spend a valuable amount of your time there. Most of the books ( only 3 were hard copy) were read on my phone or laptop, Also I did have considerable free time on my hand for a significant part of year considering the fact that I wasn’t working. Though I got most of the books for free from here , I would love to buy the hard copy version of a good number of them later.
I have this list because I chose to keep track of my reading list in order to push the books I’ve not read to the next month and not forget, also to enable me examine the pattern of my choices. I didn’t think I’d be sharing a post at the end of the year so I don’t have summary on what I learnt from the books and if I were to attempt that now I’d probably write cliché stuff that wouldn’t faithfully represent what I’ve learnt or how awesome they were. Every month has a book of the bible, well I figured it’s a book too.
January
Colossians — Apostle Paul
The Lords of Strategy: The Secret Intellectual History of the New Corporate World — Walter Kiechel
The Fourth Industrial Revolution— Klaus Schawb
February
Philipians — Apostle Paul
The Icarus Deception: How High Will You Fly? — Seth Godin
Future Minds: How the Digital Age Is Changing Our Minds, Why This Matters, and What We Can Do About It — Richard Watson
The Code of the Extraordinary Mind: 10 Unconventional Laws to Redefine Your Life and Succeed On Your Own Terms — Vishen Lakhiani
March
Ephesians — Apostle Paul
#AskGaryVee: One Entrepreneur’s Take on Leadership, Social Media, and Self-Awareness — Gary Vaynerchuck
The End of Average: How We Succeed in a World That Values Sameness — Todd Rose
One thing you can’t do in heaven — Mark Cahill
Linchpin: Are You Indispensable? — Seth Godin
Give and Take: A Revolutionary Approach to Success — Adam Grant
April
Galatians — Apostle Paul
Originals: How Non-Conformists Move the World — Adam Grant
Has Christianity failed you? — Ravi Zacharias
Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products — Nir Eyal
Platform Revolution: How Networked Markets Are Transforming the Economy and How to Make Them Work for You — Sangeet Paul Cloudary
Bad Samaritans: The Myth of Free Trade and the Secret History of Capitalism — Ha Joon Chang
May
James — James
Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action — Simon Sinek
Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead— Sheryl Sandberg
June
Hebrews — Apostle Paul
The Alliance: Managing Talent in the Networked Age — Ben Casnocha, Chris Yeh, and Reid Hoffman
Scrum: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time — Jeff Sutherland
Why simple wins: Escape the Complexity Trap and Get to Work That Matters — Lisa Bodell
The Fortune Cookie Principle: The 20 Keys to a Great Brand Story and Why Your Business Needs One — Jiwa Bernadette
Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future — Peter Thiel
Grace Happens Here: You Are Standing Where Grace Is Happening — Max Lucado
A smarter way to learn HTML and CSS — Mark Myers
The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business — Ben Horowortiz
July
Philemon, Titus, 1 Timothy — Apostle Paul
5 levels of Leadership: Proven Steps to Maximize Your Potential — John C. Maxwell
Grace: More Than We Deserve, Greater Than We Imagine — Max Lucado
Christian Philosophy — Andrew Wommack
Change by Design: How Design Thinking Transforms Organizations and Inspires Innovation — Tim Brown
Meaningful: The Story of Ideas that Fly — Jiwa Bernadette
Difference:The One-Page Method for Reimagining Your Business and Reinventing Your Marketing — Jiwa Bernadette
How to be a stronger Christian — Dog haw Mills
August
Colossians- Apostle Paul
Free: The Future of radical price — Chris Anderson
God is Good: He’s Better Than You Think — Bill Johnson
September
Philippians — Apostle Paul
Drive: The surprising truth about what motivates us — Daniel Pink
We Are All Weird: The Myth of Mass and the End of Compliance — Seth Godin
So Good They Can’t Ignore You: Why Skills Trump Passion in the Quest for Work You Love — Cal Newport
Option B: Facing Adversity, Building Resilience, and Finding Joy — Sheryl Sandberg & Adam Grant
October
Ephesians — Apostle Paul
Good to Great:Why Some Companies Make the Leap… and Others Don’t — Jim collins
The Best Place to Work: The Art and Science of Creating an Extraordinary Workplace — Ron Friedman
The Future of Work: Attract New Talent, Build Better Leaders, and Create a Competitive Organization — Jacob Morgan
November
Galatians — Apostle Paul
The Art of thinking clearly — Rolf Dobelli
Whatcha gonna do with that Duck? — Seth Godin
December
Ephesians — Apostle Paul
The Art of thinking clearly — Rolf Dobelli
Whatcha gonna do with that Duck? — Seth Godin
Am I being fooled? — Iren Emmanuel
Accounting: Thanks to ACCA exams, I had to learn these
Taxation
Governance, Risk & Ethics
Business Analysis
Cooperate Reporting
Advanced Financial Management
Advanced Audit and Assurance
Programming: Codecademy primarily and Youtube
Web development ( HTML & CSS, Responsive Design,WordPress installation and configuration)
Other non-book sources
Medium, constant source of short reads
Farnam Street
YouTube: TED talks, GaryVee, Coldfusion and other numerous channels that I stumbled on once or twice.
Books I couldn’t read in 2017, I might carry forward to 2018
The Murder of Roger Ackoyde — Agatha Christie ( Sorry Boro 🙈)
How Not to Be wrong: The Power of Mathematical — Jordan Ellenburg
To Sell is Human: The surprising truth about moving others — Daniel Pink
Why Leaders Eat last — Simon Sinek
4 work week — Tim ferris
Not a Fan — Kyle Idleman
Born a Crime — Trevor Noah
Thou shall prosper — Rabbi Daniel Lapin
Everybody writes — Anna Handley
Who Made God?: And Answers to Over 100 Other Tough Questions of Faith — Norman Geisler, Ravi Zacharias
Slide:ology: The Art and Science of Creating Great Presentations — Nancy Duarte
Resonate: Present Visual Stories that Transform Audiences — Nancy Duarte
The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined — Steven Pinker
I most definitely missed out capturing what I learnt from conversations & observations but in all I’ve been most humbled by what I’ve learnt during the year.
I’m eager to learn more.
I’d try to document better in 2018.
And yes please make any person, book or site or video recommendations you would want me to follow read or follow.