- The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership by John Maxwell – The second business book I read after The Greatest Management Principle in the World, which I discovered was a lot more than being just about business. Leadership is a principle that can be applied in all aspects of life, even if one is a very private person. The first person you have to lead, after all, is yourself. A story in this book that has stuck with me all these years is how Ray Kroc took the hamburger store started by the McDonald brothers and turned it into a worldwide phenomenon. The brothers sadly did not have the vision that Kroc had and sold the company and all rights to him, missing out on one of the most lucrative businesses in the world.
Favorite Passage: If you can’t influence people, then they will not follow you. And if people won’t follow, you are not a leader…No matter what anybody else may tell you, remember that leadership is influence—nothing more, nothing less.
- Robert Frost’s Poems by Robert Frost – I fell in love with Robert Frost in high school. We studied a couple of his poems and then I went and looked for more of them. I liked the easy rhythm and the unforced rhymes. The poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge once said that good prose is about putting words in the right order. But good poetry is putting the right words in the right order. I think that is a fitting description for Frost’s poems — the right words in the right order. His ‘The Road Not Taken’ has turned out to be sort of a roadmap of my life, with me always wanting to take the road less traveled.
Favorite Passage: I shall be telling this with a sigh; Somewhere ages and ages hence: Two roads diverged in a wood, and I–I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference.
- A B N K K B S N P L A K o ? ! by Bob Ong – As a rule, I do not like reading Filipino books. I hated the subject in school and my lowest grades were always because of it. I failed a Philosophy class in college partly because it was in Filipino (and partly because the teacher was an ***). So a whole lot of credit goes to Bob Ong for making me read this book (and even buying the ones that followed), and wildly recommending it to others. For the Filipino readers wondering about the title, you are supposed to read it in abakada fashion (“a”, “ba”, “na”, and so on). It’s a hilarious tome recounting Ong’s school days and antics in the classroom. It was highly relatable and I even spent time in my class reading passages aloud to my students and we all had a good laugh. I never thought I would enjoy a Filipino book in my life but this one changed that notion.
Favorite Passage: Pero hindi biro ang pagbabasa, rite of passage ‘to pag natuto ka. Ibig sabihin nabinyagan ka na bilang “literate”. Kaya mong magbasa ng mga kasinungalingan sa dyaryo, ng mga subtitles sa foreign movies, at ng mga vandalism sa upuan ng bus gaya ng “Bobo ang bumasa nito!”
Email me at andy@freethinking.me. View previous articles at www.freethinking.me.