January Reads: Leadership, New (and Old) Children’s Classics, and Great Non-Fiction

Hello Everyone,

It is hard to believe that the first month of 2023 has already come and gone! This month has been hectic and stressful for me on a personal level, and I am hoping that February brings a little more clarity and sense of purpose. I am struggling to focus on reading right now, and I am recognizing that the next few months will perhaps be a little less full of books than I would like.

That being said, I have a lot to share with you today. One of my goals for this year is to read more books I truly love and to figure out which books those actually are. This month, I have 6 amazing books to share with you that have appeal for many different readers, from middle grade graphic novels to leadership books to dense, long literary fiction.

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Children’s Classics: The Wind in The Willows by Kenneth Graham and The Tea Dragon Society by Kay O’Neill

In the end of December/beginning of January, I did a major clean out and reorganization of some of our things (we moved last year, but with the Pacific Crest Trail, never truly unpacked and figured out what we had) and found a wonderful, 1960s edition of The Wind in The Willows (photo above), which I had, surprisingly, never read. I enjoyed the book so much, and especially appreciated the ways that the book assumed children’s natural curiosity and intellect, instead of talking down to them.

I also read a (much) more recent book, The Tea Dragon Society. A magical and beautiful graphic novel about dragons who “grow” tea plants, this has swept the adult book world over the past few years as well, and it is a sweet concept that is perfectly executed, with a great cast of characters. It also does a wonderful job of recognizing the complexity of children’s emotional lives, especially the ways that they can hold so many contradictory dreams, feelings and aspirations.

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Non Fiction Heading South and West: West With The Night by Beryl Markham and My Southern Journey by Rick Bragg

The confluence of journey/cardinal directions in the titles of these books is about all they have in common, but they were both delightful. West With The Night, published in 1942, is Markham’s memoir, telling the story of her adolescence and early adulthood training horses and flying planes in Kenya, ending with her historic flight from England to North America, in which she became the first PERSON (not just woman) to make the journey east to west. The book is well written, and the stories are, as you can imagine, pretty incredible. I listening to this and struggled a bit with how jumpy the timeline was, but overall, really enjoyed this insight into a woman I have never heard much about.

I also listened to My Southern Journey by Rick Bragg, which completely surprised me. Bragg reads this himself, and the audio experience is hard to surpass. It is early, but I would guess this will be one of my favorite audio-books of the year. This book of essays, written over a decade in the 2000s covers everything from the joys of Southern food (and the necessity of lard) to the religion of football. This book is funny, insightful (there are times with a turn of phrase was so beautiful and purely true that it stopped me in my tracks) and incredibly relatable despite the specificity of the subject. I am going to be picking up another book by Bragg before the end of the year simply because I want to more of his gentle humor and amazing writing.

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A Masterclass in Wrapping Things Up: White Teeth by Zadie Smith

The beauty of Zadie Smith’s debut novel White Teeth is the last 10-15 pages of the 400+ page novel. This is an inter-generational, interracial book about immigrants in 1990s London, and while it definitely drags a bit in the middle, it has one of the best and most explosive endings I have read in quite some time.

It is a true first novel in that it is kind of about everything. She pretty masterfully incorporates Jehovah’s Witnesses, Muslim fundamentalism, WW2 veterans, second-generation immigrant issues, normal teenage angst, interracial relationships and white savoir-ism, and gender roles into something that makes sense, which is both a little headache-inducing and also kind of fun.

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Organizational Leadership with a Twist: Turn the Ship Around! by L. David Marquet

This is a weird out of left field choice for me, but I just really want to share it with you all! I first heard about this book years ago on the wonderful podcast/radio program A Good Read when I was struggling to figure out how to be an effective leader. I got it on inter-library loan this past month, and loved it so much I may actually buy it.

The surface level of Turn The Ship Around! is Marquet, a submarine commander in the US Navy, talking about what happened when he was tasked with taking command of a submarine that was not performing well, and what he did to turn this around and get the same crew performing at the highest levels of excellence. This part of the book was great, and I loved discovering a little about how nuclear submarine works.

Simultaneously, he asks us to reexamine what leadership truly is, and suggests that when we empower more people to have the capacity, information and knowledge to make decisions, and then let them make those decisions on their own, we get more resilient organizations and more engaged employees.

I also really appreciated the fact that he recognizes the mistakes he made as he developed this. While this book proposes specific mechanisms and examples, it also reiterates that these sort of organizational overhauls have to be complete and system-wide, and that little (and big) failures are a natural part of adopting a new process.

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I hope you find something to enjoy today. I will be back next week to highlight some of the books being adapted into TV or movies in 2023. There will be shows and movies I am excited for, some I think are funny or interesting, and possible a few I am a little scared of.

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