The Heart of Business: Leadership Principles for the Next Era of Capitalism (Hubert Joly)

Hubert Joly is a former executive at several businesses. While at Best Buy, he helped engineer a turnaround of the electronics retailer and guided it out of a period of declining sales and uncertainty about its future into a stronger, more profitable place. The Heart of Business is his recipe for how business leaders should operate and how capitalism should be rethought in order to better serve our world.

Joly’s philosophy is interspersed with anecdotes from his career. He shares his beliefs that putting people at the center of the business and treating profit as an outcome are better than pursuing the classic strategy of maximizing profit. He cites increased employee engagement, lower turnover, and better customer service metrics as reasons to pursue these objectives.

The Heart of Business also advocates a position that business leaders need to speak out and take a more active role in political matters. Whether you agree with that position personally or not, Joly’s idea of advocating a more humane approach to business is very sound and valuable in today’s environment. I wish he had devoted more energy to his chapter on “the purposeful leader”, where he advocates five “be’s” as strategies for leaders to better themselves. Only seeing these strategies take up a few pages, given they were the strength of the book, was a bit of a letdown. That said, I appreciated Joly’s approach to leadership and articulating his vision for businesses to operate and execute differently.

MY RATING - 4

Hour of the Witch (Chris Bohjalian)

What happens when a Puritan woman in New England wants to leave her abusive husband? Chris Bohjalian's historical fiction novel Hour of the Witch deftly answers this unique question in the heart-pounding first part but then fizzles a bit after that.

In 1662, Mary Deerfield is living with her husband, Thomas, and their servant girl, Catherine. Thomas is terribly violent toward Mary and rather than tolerating it, she decides to take matters into her own hands and file for divorce. Back then, one needed to get government approval to divorce. Not only that, but Mary soon finds herself the target of suspicion of witchcraft.

This book is divided into a few parts. The part leading up to Mary's divorce hearing is absolutely compelling. After that, Hour of the Witch loses a little luster and becomes predictable. But I admire Bohjalian for taking the topic of divorce on at a time period when it was almost unheard of. 

MY RATING - 3.5

Broken: In the Best Possible Way (Jenny Lawson)

As the author of an ultra-popular blog and multiple best-selling books, Jenny Lawson (AKA "The Bloggess") certainly has a devoted following. I've never read anything by Lawson before, so I was excited to pick up her latest, Broken (In the Best Possible Way).

Broken is made up of many different chapters about Lawson's life, some of which are more successful than others. The problem for me as a new reader of Lawson's was that I couldn't really tell what this book was trying to be. Some chapters were laugh-out-loud funny, others were poignant vignettes about Lawson's mental illness, and a few were just odd (like Lawson's Shark Tank ideas). At times, the author's writing seemed forced, like she was just trying to fill up the pages.

But of course, my opinion is in the minority. I'm still giving Broken a 3 out of 5 because there were quite a few parts I genuinely either enjoyed or found affecting. 

MY RATING - 3

A World Without Email: Reimagining Work in an Age of Communication Overload (Cal Newport)

Many people's hours at work are spent triaging cluttered email inboxes, trying desperately to get it under control. “Work” for some has become synonymous with the number of emails that are sent out over the course of a day. Emails fly around at all hours of day and night in an attempt to keep up with customer inquiries, internal questions from colleagues, and simply reading the latest memo from the CEO.

Author Cal Newport argues that your work shouldn’t be defined by your inbox but that it should be simplified, diversified, and process-oriented. His book, A World Without Email: Reimagining Word in an Age of Communication Overload, addresses his philosophy for better, more productive, and more meaningful work. The book is broken down into two parts: The first focuses on the problem of workplace communication and the second on solutions to fix and improve office work and productivity.  Newport argues that part of the shift in how we work starts with us and part of it also lies with the team that we work with. He suggests ideas such as dedicated email response time, “deep work”, and more focused meetings as three solutions that can be incorporated.

People in office life and knowledge economy jobs would do well to read this book and hopefully adopt some of Newport’s suggestions to make their work life better and more efficient.

MY RATING - 4

The Lost Village (Camilla Sten)

It's so rare for authors to write horror novels anymore whose name is not Stephen King. There are always countless mysteries on the shelf, but the amount of true horror books is quite small. Camilla Sten's The Lost Village is done really well and keeps the reader guessing until the last few pages.

In 1959, the residents of an entire Swedish village simply vanished. All that was left was a single body stoned in the town square and a newborn baby crying in a school. In present day, Alice Lindstedt travels to this village for two reasons: to make a documentary and to try to discover what happened to the villagers, some of whom were her grandmother's family. Almost immediately, Alice and her crew become the victims of sinister happenings as they look for the truth.

The Lost Village is extremely creepy, with some truly frightening moments. Sten's choice of parallel narrations between "then" and "now" is also very effective. I really liked this one! But take my advice -- read it with the lights on.

MY RATING - 4

Digital Nomads: In Search of Freedom, Community, and Meaningful Work in the New Economy (Rachael A. Woldoff and Robert C. Litchfield)

In Digital Nomads, authors Rachael A. Woldoff and Robert C. Litchfield focus specifically on the creative class that has relocated to Bali in recent years to hone their craft. Many of the transplants, often only in Bali for short stays before hopping off to another destination or back to their country of residence, work in a freelance or entrepreneurial space and have exited corporate life due to lack of fulfillment, stress, or a host of other reasons. Many are of the Millennial generation, although the authors introduce us to individuals who are older who were early adopters of the nomad lifestyle.  The authors discuss the tribal-like support of these individuals for each other, many of whom talk about working with “the right types of people” and having the “right types of support” in their professional and personal lives.

Digital Nomads is well-written and balanced, focusing on those who are successful through merit, as well as those who faked it and partially made it in Bali. You may end up laughing a bit at some of the Millennial stereotypes being played out and cringe a bit at some of the Western cultural expectations that nomads bring to Bali, but you will learn a lot about the jetset lifestyle these individuals are living.

MY RATING - 4

Anxious People (Fredrik Backman)

Someone runs into a bank and attempts to rob it. They then take hostages in a nearby building. Sounds like all the makings of a blockbuster action novel, doesn't it? But Fredrik Backman's Anxious People is just the opposite -- you think you're getting one thing, but it turns out to be quite different.

You may know Backman as the author of a little book called A Man Called Ove. His books do not rely on plots so much as they do character studies -- Backman is a master of characterization. In Anxious People, a group of strangers are attending an open house for an apartment when they find themselves in the middle of a hostage situation. Only this isn't your normal crime scene. None of them is really who they appear to be, including the bank robber. Add to that two police officers who do things you would not expect them to, and you have a book that is nowhere near what I thought it would be.

I found a few parts of Anxious People bogged down with details, but that doesn't get in the way of what it is -- an unexpected tale of compassion, empathy, and forgiveness with characters you won't soon forget.

MY RATING - 3.5