2019: The Year In Books

As we wrap up 2019, it is time to take a look back at the 28 books I read over the past year, an increase of 6 books over last year.  Of those 28, 7 were non-fiction and, of the 21 novels, only 3 were tied to a TV show.  Only one of the books came out of my dwindling “to-read” drawer, 19 were e-books, and, for the first time, there was 1 audio book.  I read nearly 9,500 pages, my second highest total of all time.

Once again, a majority of the books I read this year were by authors I’ve never read before. The 15 authors that I read for the first this year were:

  • Bill Clinton
  • Charles Willeford
  • Nell Scovell
  • Ernest Cline
  • Katrin Schumann
  • Lindy West
  • Luke Jennings
  • Agatha Christie
  • W. P. Kinsella
  • Aziz Ansari
  • John Gregory Betancourt
  • Julie Gregory
  • Mindy Kaling
  • Anthony Stevens
  • Louis Strauss
  • Dean Wesley Smith
  • Kristine Kathryn Rusch
  • Nell Zink
  • Stephanie Wittels Wachs

Jeffery Deaver and Karin Slaughter were the only authors that I read multiple titles from during 2019.

5 of the books I read were released this year, while 5 of them were released last century, with the oldest first published in 1934.

Finally, the breakdown by month.  My vacation to Hawaii in February and being off in December certainly helped pad its totals a tad bit.

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Book 23 (of 52) – Chasing Digital

Chasing Digital: A Playbook For The New Economy – Anthony Stevens and Louis Strauss

As we prepare to enter the third decade of the 21st century, technology is changing the landscape at a ever-increasing pace.  Legacy companies, come of age prior to the digital revolution, need to either adapt or find themselves irrelevant in the market place.  In Chasing Digital: A Playbook for the New Economy, Anthony Stevens and Louis Strauss provide the framework for those companies to transform themselves.

I was asked to read this book by a senior manager on the business side, in the hopes that I can help her transition our team from the old ways of doing things to the new way.  We have plenty of work ahead of us, but I am somewhat optimistic that we can turn the tide and lead our organization into the future.