The Best Books of 2009

• Tweet
• Sharebar

• Tweet

When my dad once told me time speeds up as you get older I thought he was nuts. So maybe he had Einstein on his side, but I still remained to be convinced. That was until somebody stole this last decade from me.

It seems like only yesterday when you couldn’t move for smug computer programmers wanting to tell you how much they were going to get paid for working on New Years Eve due to the mass Y2K paranoia. Yet it was a decade ago. That’s scary.

I have a number of posts planned, but I thought it would be remiss of me with the holiday season almost upon us not to offer my favorite books of 2009 just in time for you to get your final request to Santa in.

So the post explaining the meaning of life and the one on how to cultivate immortality will have to wait until the new year as I throw my 2 cents hat into the mixed metaphor ring with what the world really needs. Another list post!

A minor confession up front. Three of the reviews below are simply copy and pasted from my original review. Well come on, what did you expect I have a work/life balance to maintain here you know.

Bob Poole – Listen First, Sell Later

This is a sales book which is cool, because YOU are a sales person.

I don’t care who you are or what you do, you have to sell on a regular basis. It may be a product or service or it may simply be yourself or an idea you have, but you still have to sell. Every time somebody phones me about Life Coaching, I have to sell me and often the concept of Life Coaching too, there simply is no way round that.

As we move into a new decade the need to be able to communicate (or sell) our ideas is becoming increasingly important. You can bury your head in the sand and think it doesn’t apply to you or you can decide to improve your skills use this is a great starting point.

I have read a lot of sales books over the years and this one is up there with the best. Bob Poole is the uncle everybody wants because he’s wise, funny and extremely avuncular. If he was living 500 years ago (and he may well have been), he’d have been the local village go-to guy for wisdom and stuff like that.

Listen First – Sell Later is very accessible for the layperson. It doesn’t delve around in the murky depths of different sales techniques and processes, it just delivers line after line of practical and highly useful advice.

Bob is currently running an offer in which if you buy his book and send him the Amazon receipt, he’ll then send you a FREE version of Seth Godins book, ‘Free Prize Inside’ That is a fantastic deal and I feel sure you’ll not be disappointed in either book. And speaking of Seth Godin…

Seth Godin – Tribes

Seriously, what is not to like about Seth Godin? He speaks with a level of common sense that is remarkable only because of how uncommon it is. He’s the kind of person that leaves me nodding my head in agreement so often I’m in danger of developing repetitive strain injury in my neck and writes books I wish I’d written.

In short Godin is that rare beast, a true visionary, and quite honestly I’ve yet to read a book of his that didn’t add a lot of value.

‘Tribes’ is no different and if you are looking to understand why some businesses thrive and prosper in times such as these and why some don’t, this will give you a large clue.

It will also help you understand what YOU need to do to form your own tribe around your business and why effective leadership is so important in the modern era.

If you’re not already on the Seth Godin bandwagon I suggest you hop on board whilst there is still some room because I’m lobbying to close the doors to keep out the heretics.

Jonathan Fields – Career Renegade

If you haven’t already got this book, why not? Seriously dude or dudette you NEED this book if you work for yourself or would like to work for yourself. It really is that simple.

The best book written on that topic I’ve ever read and I don’t know a single soul that has read it and didn’t get loads of value. Go buy it now and do yourself a favor.

William Giruzzi  – A Life Worth Living

I really am struggling to know what to say about this quirky little book. You could read it under 2 hours, so if I tell you it took me a week and a half to get half way through it you’ll know I was less than gripped. I wasn’t even sure why I was sticking with it other than a sense it was going to be worth it. I have a bookshelf littered with books I quit on when they didn’t seem to be offering any value. This almost made it onto my shelf of dishonor.

Fortunately I stuck with ‘A Life Worth Living’ and I say fortunately, because it is definitely a book worth reading. I almost think it could be subtitled ‘Zen And The Art Of Life Design’ because it has that kind of feel to me. Having said that, is has nothing overtly to do with Zen Buddhism and everything to do with getting the reader to think completely differently about his or her own life.

The author even uses a cunning plan of asking the reader questions at the end of each chapter to promote further thought. Hmm, where have I seen that done before I wonder?

I really don’t want to say too much because I could sum it up and make it less worthy of reading and that’s like telling you Bruce Willis is really dead as I hand you a DVD of ‘The Sixth Sense’

Giruzzi uses a lot of repetition to get his message across, but I think that is important, because he certainly doesn’t leave the reader in any doubt as to what they need to do to make themselves ‘A Life Worth Living’ . And no, this isn’t a ‘how to’ book, in fact far from it, but it is a paradigm shifter and one that I guarantee will offer you insights into your life that you never considered. Highly recommended.

Jonah Lehrer – How We Decide

I liked the audio version of this book so much I went out and bought the hardback too. Here’s what I said about the book a few months ago:

This is the best book I have read this year and probably the best I have read since Malcolm Gladwell’s ‘Blink’. It is similar to ‘Blink’ in so much as it takes a look at rapid cognition, but it goes a whole lot deeper.

‘How We Decide’ not only explains what is going on inside the brain as we make decisions and why we are sometimes so poor, but it does so in a manner that is accessible and interesting to most people. You won’t get lost in academic jargon because what there is, is explained clearly and concisely.

Lehrer brilliantly uses real life examples of famous ‘blow ups’ and successes to explain what was actually happening inside the mind of the person at that time. Occasionally his facts are a bit off, saying Jean Van De Velde lost the British Open on the eighteenth hole, when in reality his total collapse meant a play-off he then lost, but that is a minor quibble.

‘How We Decide’ will help you understand your thought processes better, realize when to let your unconscious make decisions and when it’s best to use your conscious rational mind. It even explains why so many people get caught up in credit card debt and others are prone to become addicts.

Dan Ariely – Predictably Irrational

This book was originally released in 08, but the version I have (or had as I leant it to a client and haven’t had it back yet!) was updated this year and so I’m counting it in this year.

Most people presume they are a rational person making decisions in life based on cold hard facts. The fact is everybody is irrational and we all make decisions often in spite of contradictory facts and evidence.

As a sales person I have intuitively known people are irrational for years, but I never realized that irrationality was so predictable and so exploited by advertisers and marketers.

‘Predictably Irrational’ explains why we procrastinate, why we like to leave our options open, often to our own detriment,  the power of free, why people are dishonesty and the real cost to Society, the power of beliefs and the difference between social and market norms.

Some of the stories I have read or heard about before, but as a Professor of Behavioral Economics at MIT, there is a lot of his own work included that was new to me. The way he weaves it all together makes this a highly enjoyable and incredibly enlightening read. This is a great companion book to ‘How We Decide’ and equally as accessible.

If you want to know more about what makes you and others tick and be even more aware of how the less scrupulous sometimes use that knowledge to sell to you, then this is the book for you

Tim Hurson – Think Better

Is it ethical to write a review of a book you haven’t even finished reading? I have no idea, but I’m going to anyway such is my enjoyment of this book.

As you may have guessed by now, I love books about how the mind works (or more accurately, how we can make it work better) and ‘Think Better’ fits snugly into that criteria.

‘Think Better’ a book about critical thinking and how we can train our mind to be more productive with the thinking process. Hurson explains that most thinking isn’t even thinking as we normal consider it, it’s just a collection of pre-determined responses to specific events. Simply knowing that opens up a world of possibility as we realize that we can consciously intervene and change the process with a little bit of effort.

Edward De Bono’s book ‘Six Thinking Hats’ was a ground breaker to me in the way it changed how I thought of brain storming and ‘Think Better’ picks up the baton. As I say I’m only half way though, but already I’ve had value for money and I’m excited about reading the remainder.

So there you have it, my favorite non-fiction books of 2009. I was tempted to throw How To Be Rich and Happy in there, but resisted such self-indulgence.

I would love your take on your favorite books. Two books that have recieved a lot of hype that I still haven’t got round to are ‘Crush It’ and ‘Escaping Cubicle Nation’. Hopefully I’ll get to check those out in the new year, but if you’ve read them, I’d welcome your opinion in the comments.