Bookending the month with a few words on things read, noted, seen, heard.
- READ Crucial Conversations. Recent epic conversational Fail sent me back to this extremely helpful book.
- READ A Whole New Mind. Enjoyed this while awaiting results (good) of a CAT scan. Right-brainer’s choice for finding out more about what’s going on in there.
- READ The Sunday Morning Philosophy Club. My sister, Rachel, loves the author – Alexander McCall Smith – so I took this one along when we visited the Grand Canyon together this month.
- READ Humilitas. Some interesting insights in this book on anno domini leadership and, for me a new perspective on the subject. Places in opposition the honor/shame model of pre-Christian times with the humility model for leadership since. Much food for thought. But I was a bit surprised by the amount of ink devoted to Sir Edmund Hillary. A remarkable man – but surely it was Tenzing Norgay who was the servant-leader of the Everest story? And I was completely distracted by the way the book all but ignored one particular social group: a group that consists of people who throughout history have found it natural to be of influence by serving and supporting; who have consistently and quietly surrendered their own needs to those of others; who have never established an honor/shame society. (I hope?) True, the author is fairly even-handed with his types (“Jane, CEO of an electronics company …”) but I remember only two real women from this book – and one of those was included alongside her husband but barely mentioned thereafter.
- READ Dakota. Revisited for this semester’s vocation reading group. Wonderful book, totally lives up to its marvelous subtitle: A Spiritual Geography.
- GUILTY PLEASURE: Downton Abbey. Ridiculously pleased to find out, via Internet quiz, that I am, in fact, Robert, Earl of Grantham.
