Need a Summer Read? Here Are My Top Three
Olivia Cain
I help businesses scale with creative digital marketing strategies | Brand, B2B, Creative Marketing Solutions
How are we already halfway through 2017? My goal for the year was to read a book a month... I must say I have fallen slightly short. Why? Well, I like to read in complete silence, and alone. It's not often I find myself in that headspace with all of our daily commitments and distractions. Yet, I'm always on the lookout for a good book more than the actual peace of reading. However, titles and authors are always a fleeting memory and end up lying in pile in some dark corner of my brain. Forget no more! Here are three titles I have gathered through friends, colleagues and even Instagram influencers (!!) to reinvigorate my goal one month at a time.
We know in order for businesses to flourish, they must have stellar content. However we are facing a digital deluge of content, where brands are all wanting in, but fail to understand the audiences they are creating content for in the first place. Anand is sharing important lessons, debunking myths, and realigning strategies through stories from China's behemoth Tencent to music companies and magazine publishers.
2. How We Got To Now: Six Innovations that Made the Modern World, Steven Johnson
A book that talks about innovation over the centuries that brought us to where we are today? Sign me up! It's stories like these that help us understand the world around us. Examining everyday objects, human imperfection, and mistakes that result in miracles. I sense a good beach read here.
3. The Storytelling Animal: How Stories Make Us Human, Jonathan Gottschall
I have always been fascinated by great storytellers. Plus I have never 'listened' to a book, and love the fact that a book on storytelling, is literally being told like a story in it's purest form. Gottschall presents the first cohesive storytelling theory and how it's evolved for our survival.
Have you read any of these books? If so, what did you think?
What books are on your 'To read' list this summer?
Like thinking about the role of"Storytelling" in belief formation. Just finished writing a paper on the role of social imagination (SI) in problem solving and how SI techniques can awaken prosocial attitudes and behaviors. Gottschall book will be on my summer read list for sure. Thanks Mark & Olivia for sharing.