29 Apr Suggested New Books For Spring!
We have selected five of the best new books to empower, inspire, entertain and maybe enlighten you this Spring!
Very Good Lives: The Fringe Benefits of Failure and the Importance of Imagination by J.K. Rowling
In 2008, J.K. Rowling delivered an inspiring life-affirming commencement speech at Harvard University. Now published for the first time in book form, Very Good Lives offers J.K. Rowling’s words of wisdom for anyone at a turning point in life, asking the profound and provocative questions: How can we embrace failure? And how can we use our imagination to better both ourselves and others? Drawing from stories of her own post-graduate years, the world-famous author addresses some of life’s most important issues with acuity and emotional force. Sales of Very Good Lives will benefit Lumos, a charity organisation founded by J.K. Rowling, which works to transform the lives of disadvantaged children, and university-wide financial aid at Harvard University.
Work Rules!: Insights from Inside Google That Will Transform How You Live and Lead by Laszlo Bock
‘We spend more time working than doing anything else in life. It’s not right that the experience should be so de-motivating and dehumanizing,’ says Laszlo Bock, visionary head of People Operations at Google. Work Rules! offers both a new philosophy of the new world of work and a blueprint for attracting the most spectacular talent and ensuring the brightest and best prosper. Your workplace and how you treat your employees has a huge effect on your success.
Bock lays out a series of surprising lessons from a range of industries from household names to little-known innovators. He also takes us inside one of history’s most explosively successful businesses to reveal why Google is consistently rated one of the best places to work in the world. His years of experience are distilled into a series of entertaining principles that are easy to put into action, whether you’re a team of one or a team of thousands. Read it to build a better company from within rather than from above; read it to reawaken your joy in what you do. The way we work is changing – are you?
Return on Character by Fred Kiel
In this groundbreaking book, respected leadership researcher, adviser, and author Fred Kiel offers that evidence–solid data that demonstrates the connection between character, leadership excellence, and organisational results. After seven years of rigorous research based on a landmark study of more than 100 CEOs and over 8,000 of their employees’ observations, Kiel’s findings show that leaders of strong character achieved up to five times the return on investment for their organisations compared to leaders of weak character. Return on Character goes on to reveal: How leadership character is formed, how it creates value, and how that value spreads throughout the organisation and how low-character leaders undermine the success of even the best business plans. It shows how leaders at any level can develop the habits of strong character and “unlearn” the habits of poor character. The book also provides a character-building methodology – step-by-step advice and techniques for assessing your own character habits and improving your performance and that of your organisation.
The Way of the Runner: A journey into the fabled world of Japanese running by Adharanand Finn
Welcome to Japan, the most running-obsessed nation on earth, a place where a 135-mile relay race is the country’s biggest annual sporting event. Thousands of professional runners compete for corporate teams in some of the most competitive races in the world, and marathon monks run a thousand marathons in a thousand days to reach spiritual enlightenment. Adharanand Finn, the award-winning author of Running With The Kenyans, spent six months immersed in this unique running culture to discover what it might teach us about the sport and about Japan. As an amateur runner about to turn forty, he also hoped to find out whether the Japanese approach to training might help him run faster. What he learned – about competition, team work, form, chasing personal bests and about himself – will fascinate anyone keen to explore why we run, and how we might do it better.
The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying: A simple, effective way to banish clutter forever by Marie Kondo
Transform your home into a permanently clear and clutter-free space with the incredible KonMari Method. The key to successful tidying is to tackle your home in the correct order, to keep only the things you really love and to do it all at once and quickly. After that for the rest of your life you only need to choose what to keep and what to discard. The KonMari Method will not just transform your space. Once you have your house in order you will find that your whole life will change. You can feel more confident, you can become more successful, and you can have the energy and motivation to create the life you want.