My Reading Lists

23 Jun 2011, 2:15pm

by Danielle Morrill

2 comments

I believe in keeping up a very active reading schedule, and I try to complete at least one book a week in addition to consuming hundreds of articles, essays, and blog posts. I’m a fan of focusing on reading books and long form writing like Paul Graham’s essays or the 7+ page articles in The Atlantic, Vanity Fair, The New Yorker, and The Economist because they are more substantive. They’re high fiber reading compared to a lot of the fluff online. You’ll also find a write in a longer format.

After joining the tech industry, about 5 years ago, I had to make a special effort to read things that are substantive, that demand my whole attention, that make me think, that transport me.

I think reading the things on this list have significantly changed my world view. I could gush about each one for an hour… but instead you can try them for yourself.

What I’m Reading Right Now

I tend to read several books at once – I’m convinced that it helps me make better connections between various ideas. I love it and I have been reading this way since I was in my early teens. Here are the books that are currently active in my Amazon Kindle reader, as well as some from my bedside table.

Hedy’s Folly: The Life and Breakthrough Inventions of Hedy Lamarr, the Most Beautiful Woman in the World – by Richard Rhodes

Venture Deals: Be Smarter Than Your Lawyer and Venture Capitalist – by Brad Feld, Jason Mendelson, and Dick Costolo

Steve Jobs – by Walter Isaacson

Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert

All of Paul Graham’s essays – he’s the guy who started YCombinator, and he writes about all sorts of things related to startups in long form essays

Books

You know, those things you read on your Kindle or iPad…

Marketing Strategy

The Pyramid Principle: Logic in Thinking and Writing – by Barbara Minto

The Marketing Playbook – by John Zagula

Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die – by Chip Heath & Dan Heath

Blue Ocean Strategy: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make Competition Irrelevant – by

Management

Tribal Leadership: Leveraging Natural Groups to Build a Thriving Organization – by John King & Halee Fischer-Wright

The Future of Management – by Gary Hamel

Business Processes & Efficiency

The Goal: A Process of Ongoing Improvement – by Eliyahu M. Goldratt

Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience – by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

The Myth of the Paperless Office – by Abigail J. Sellen

Specific to Startups

Do What You Love, the Money Will Follow: Discovering Your Right Livelihood – by Marsha Sinetar (this one is particularly special to me because I read it for the first time when I was 12 and my Dad was reading it while on his 2nd startup)

Growing Pains: Transitioning from an Entrepreneurship to a Professional Managed Firm – by Eric G. Flamholtz

Rules for Revolutionaries: The Capitalist Manifesto for Creating and Marketing New Products & Services – by Guy Kawasaki

The Art of the Start: The Time-Tested, Battle-Hardened Guide for Anyone Starting Anything – by Guy Kawasaki

The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development – by Brant Cooper and Patrick Vlaskovits

The Four Steps to the Epiphany: Successful Strategies for Products That Win – by Steve Blank

Shipping Industry

The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger – by Marc Levinson

Biographies & Historical

Thomas A. Edison, Benefactor of Mankind; the Romantic Life Story of the World’s Greatest Inventor – by Francis Trevelyan Miller

Fiction

Ender’s Game – by Orson Scott Card

Wizard’s First Rule (1st book in the Sword of Truth series) – by Terry Goodkind