My Top Ten Books for 2015

Not necessarily published this year but books that I read between January and December this year.

10. The  Divine Magician by Peter Rollins Peter Rollins knows one magic trick–now, make sure you watch closely. It has three parts: the Pledge, the Turn, and the Prestige. I did a 5 week online course with Rollins and am taking in his Atheism for Lent series in February.

9. Brief by Joseph McCormack  “Brief “isn’t a nicety, it’s a necessity. It’s the new norm. The problem is most people don’t have the know-how or verbal discipline to do the groundwork and get to the point.

8. The Drunkard’s Walk by Leonard Mlodinow Mlodinow shows us how randomness, change, and probability reveal a tremendous amount about our daily lives, and how we misunderstand the significance of everything.

7. The Road to Wigan Pier by George Orwell is a brilliant and bitter polemic that has lost none of its political impact over time.

6. The Art of Asking by Amanda Palmer  Performing as a living statue in a wedding dress, she wordlessly asked thousands of passersby for their dollars. When she became a singer, songwriter, and musician, she was not afraid to ask her audience to support her.

5. Scarcity by Sendhil Mullainathan Drawing on cutting-edge research from behavioral science and economics, Mullainathan and Shafir show that scarcity creates a similar psychology for everyone struggling to manage with less than they need.

4. The Art of Work by Jeff Goins This is a book about discovering your life’s work, that treasure of immeasurable worth we all long for. Its about the task you were born to do.

3. Meaningful by Bernadette Jiwa A power read about adding value (especially for our customers) by helping them dicover meaning.

2. The Blackthorn Key by Kevin Sands I bought this YA title for a grandson, after introducing sands at Wordfest, but really enjoyed the magic and history sewn throughout.

1. Etta, Russel, Otto and James by Emma Hooper. This won’t be a surprise as I have written about this masterpiece on this blog before. Save to say, it unseated a long standing title from my sacred bundle of 5, to take to a desert island. EOR&J fits neatly between Diamant and Twain.

What were your top reads of 2015?