Israel's Bookshelf: New Year's Edition

By Israel Lang, Executive Consultant, HTG Peer Groups

If I am completely honest with all of you, I buy way more books than I read. On average, I probably buy three or four books a month. In addition to those books, I normally get three or four a quarter sent to me from publisher and marketing friends in hopes that I will be part of the social media team that will help promote the book. I say all of that to make the point that the books that I suggest in this column are the ones that I don’t simply read, but that I engage with … books that significantly impact my thinking.

Often times, that means it takes weeks or months for me to completely read, think through, process, and consume the words the author has put on paper. I am currently working through two that meet those criteria. Take the following paragraphs as hearty endorsements for these books.

The first is Essentialism, by Greg McKeown. I started this book about three months ago and intentionally put it to the side because in the season in which I found myself, I knew that the book was speaking directly to me, but would ask me to do things I wasn’t in the position to do. So rather than spin, allow damaging self-talk to creep in and generally feel frustrated, I pressed the pause button.

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