Books of 2019 – Numbers 16, 17 and 18 – Gmorning, Gnight! by Lin Manuel Miranda, Feast by Hannah Howard, and Radical Candor by Kim Scott

I have a little catch-up work to do here with three additional books to add to my list. These are my books 16, 17 and 18, which puts me 35% of the way to 52 books this year. That compares to today being the 103^rd day of the year which is 28% of the way through 2019. I am feeling pretty good about my progress, but I need to keep digging in and keeping up the pace.

I did so love book number 16,  Lin Manuel Miranda’s and Jonny Sun’s Gmorning, Gnight!: Little Pep Talks for Me & You.  Friends gave me this as a gift and it really is a gift! The book publishes Lin Manuel’s real life Twitter feed. where he writes morning and evening pick-me-ups to those who follow him. For the book, the artist ,Jonny Sun accompanies the tweets with charming drawings. I read one set of the declarations each day. There were days that the pep talk was exactly right for starting my day, and consistently thee made me smile with the warmth that they hold. A few words can carry much.

Number 17, Feast, True Love in and Out of the Kitchen is Hannah Howard’s memoir of coming to terms with an eating disorder while in the midst of living a life in the overblown food scene of major cities. It is rough to read how she treats herself and threatens her health in way too many ways. She is a very good writer and writes compellingly about the naturalness of abuse that we can subject ourselves to. Weaving her own story with the life of restaurant world is quite the whirlwind.

And finally, Radical Candor, Be a Kickass Boss Without Losing your Humanity by a woman with a resume of leadership in companies like Google and Dropbox . Kim Scott’s  summarizes her approach to leadership as caring personally and challenging directly. I like a good leadership book; especially one with practical advice. Scott’s book provides an interesting and, I think, valid framework for developing teams of trust and responsibility. The leadership time commitment that she sets forth is somewhat staggering, but it gives good guidance for those of us who are trying to be both a caring leader and an effective leader. The balance isn’t always easy.