What We’re Reading
Do You Suffer from Tsundoku?
Maybe you’re like me and you have a penchant for acquiring books faster than you can read them. One of our creative directors Scott Walters also suffers from this affliction, which he recently diagnosed as “tsundoku.”
Tsundoku is a centuries-old Japanese portmanteau word that literally means “to pile up” (“tsumu”) “reading” (“doku”). Who knew?
With the dawn of a new year and a new decade, this seems like a good time to dust off those forgotten tomes and pull together a new reading list. To help spur things along, I’ve shared the titles I’m digging into and I’ve asked my colleagues here at Smith to do the same.
Check out our list for a wide-ranging set of recommendations. If you want to chat about one of these titles, or if you have a great read you’d recommend, please let us know!
Glen Gonzalez
Poetics by Aristotle
Story by Robert McKee
Leading Change by John Kotter
Hidden Persuasion: 33 Psychological Influences Techniques in Advertising by Marc Andrews
Trey Wood
Nine Lies About Work: A Freethinking Leader’s Guide to the Real World by Marcus Buckingham and Ashley Goodall
The Essential Elias Hicks by Paul Buckley
Last Stories by William Trevor
Rick Cole
Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones by James Clear
Because Internet: Understanding the New Rules of Language by Gretchen McCulloch
Eloquent Images: Word and Image in the Age of New Media by Mary E. Hocks and Michelle R. Kendrick
Sara Levinson
The Wolves at the Door: The True Story of America’s Greatest Female Spy by Judith L Pearson
White Mouse: The Autobiography of Australia’s Wartime Legend by Nancy Wake
A Life in Secrets: Vera Atkins and the Missing Agents of WWII by Sarah Helm
Scott Walters
The Great A&P and the Struggle for Small Business in America by Marc Levinson
The Strategic Designer: Tools and Techniques for Managing the Design Process by David Holston
Eisenhower in War and Peace by Jean Edward Smith
Trillions: Thriving in the Emerging Information Ecology by Peter Lucas, Joe Ballay, and Mickey McManus
Julia Wolf
Alchemy: The Dark Art and Curious Science of Creating Magic in Brands, Business and Life by Rory Sutherland
Allison Artnak
Uncommon Type, Some Stories by Tom Hanks
Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens
Gretchen Vaught
Rosemary: The Hidden Kennedy Daughter by Kate Clifford Larson
Alexander Hamilton by Ron Chernow
The Truly Disadvantaged: The Inner City, the Underclass, and Public Policy by William Julius Wilson
Things Fall Apart, Book 1 by Chinua Achebe
Michael Garcia
Seinfeldia by Jennifer Keishin Armstrong
The Perfect Horse by Elizabeth Letts
Alone on the Wall by Alex Honnold
Don Sanford
Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
Mary Cohen
A Season on the Wind: Inside the World of Spring Migration by Kenn Kaufman
Mind Fixers: Psychiatry‘s Troubled Search for the Biology of Mental Illness by Anne Harrington
The Hidden History of Burma by Thant Myint-U
Amy Crowell
The Water Dancer by Ta-Nehisi Coates
Copperhead by Alexi Zentner
How to Build a Girl by Caitlin Moran
How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy by Jenny Odell
Catherine Sturges
The Teenage Brain: A Neuroscientist’s Survival Guide to Raising Adolescents and Young Adults by Frances E. Jensen, Amy Ellis Nutt, et al.
Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens
Horror Stories: A Memoir by Liz Phair