Jim Smith’s 12th Annual

Summer Reading List

Is now online!

It’s the first full day of summer… and aren’t you excited about the long, warm summer evenings ahead, where the evenings are long and breezy and you can sit on your porch with some cool lemonade and a good book?  (or in my case, iced coffee or dark beer, and my iPad!)

To help you focus on some great reads, I’m sharing my 12th annual compilation. (the past few years are there, too, if you want to catch up).  Read the books, or maybe just read the list, so you’ll know what other people are talking about! 🙂

Have you noticed how books, in just the past 12 months, have become almost quaint? Borders is closing stores right and left. Libraries are migrating to new platforms for sharing e-books. A gadzillion reading devices (Nook, Kindle, Kobe, iPad…) are in the hands of people who, until last summer, read ACTUAL BOOKS. And Amazon announced that e-books now officially outsell hard copy.

The fragmentation of readership is doing to bestseller lists what cable did to the networks. It’s tough to find a book that LOTS of people recommend, because there were a million new titles published last year, each with a readership of about 500 people. Yikes!

Since the world of reading’s gone all weird on us, I decided that this year is as good as any for changing the format of my Summer Reading List. This year I mix a bit of new with some classic old. Some titles come up year after year as new readers discover great works from past years, so I dug into my archives for the best of the past 11 years. Then I added in a few new entries, and I offer the list for your consideration.

To view the list, click on the icon above or on this URL:

https://theexecutivehappinesscoach.com/resources/2011_Books.cfm

Happy Summer!