“If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot. There’s no way around these two things that I’m aware of, no shortcut.”
That’s from Stephen King’s wonderful book, On Writing. If you want to write really well, you need to follow King’s advice. Most of my clients don’t want to be writers.
You don’t have to master the craft of writing if you want to author a book. You can get help from someone like me. But great books are more than great writing, they include information, insight, and inspiration and you develop those things by reading, widely and deeply.
That’s why I share reading lists that give you an idea of what to read. Use them to discover new things to read. Use them to get an idea of what other people are writing. Use them to develop a sense of what great books are like.
This week’s list comes from two people I really respect. Michael Bungay Stanier has one of the most helpful and enjoyable blogs there is. I love the favorite question and reading list posts. I’m pointing you to a post where he shares Eileen McDargh’s “Five Essential Books for Resiliency.”
I love Eileen’s work and this list is up to her usual quality. You’ll find a book that I read for the first time over fifty years ago, a book by a great business writer very few people have heard of, a book that’s not Bill Jensen’s latest, a seminal book from the positive psychology movement, and a book I’ve never read. Once I saw it on Eileen’s list, I knew it was good, so I just ordered it and downloaded to my Kindle.