Here are 46 books that Where the Action Is fans have personally recommended if you like
Where the Action Is.
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I am a work in progress, on my way to becoming a conscious communicator and an even better human being. I believe that intentional communication and (the) quality of our relationships determines the quality of our lives, careers, and societies. I’ve spent decades guiding people and cultures to foster open communication, cultivate self-understanding, and deepen trust, from large Fortune 500 to small businesses. Building communication skills is a practice that leads to self-transformation and finding meaning, and happiness. Each of these books will help you to better understand yourself and others, and learn to communicate at the level of trust.
If you’ve been avoiding having a difficult conversation, this book is for you.
It provides a step-by-step guide for preparing to have difficult conversations and navigating the waters once you’re in them, both personally and professionally. You’ll learn to see your own defensive barriers to communicating well (defensiveness to silence) and how to apply strategies for overcoming these obstacles and creating a safe and productive environment.
It’s a valuable resource you’ll come back to again and again, because people are complex, and communication is the bridge to building trust.
The New York Times and Washington Post bestseller that changed the way millions communicate
"[Crucial Conversations] draws our attention to those defining moments that literally shape our lives, our relationships, and our world. . . . This book deserves to take its place as one of the key thought leadership contributions of our time." -from the Foreword by Stephen R. Covey, author of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
"The quality of your life comes out of the quality of your dialogues and conversations. Here's how to instantly uplift your crucial conversations." -Mark Victor Hansen, cocreator of the #1…
As an organizational psychologist, I am driven to study and work to improve work activities that are causing great frustration and not working effectively—meetings are the perfect fit. And, for 20 years I have been actively publishing in this space and have spoken to well over 100,000 leaders through my keynotes/events/videos. What excites me is that meeting science can truly help leaders, teams, and organizations. The books I recommend are well-aligned with the science, and can be difference makers. I hope you enjoy them and find them helpful.
This is a really unique and different meeting book – it basically teaches about how to run meeting effectively by inserting them naturally into a fable. The fable is really quite engaging and something most of us can relate to. The learnings, although not extensive, align quite well with the science. Overall it is a fun and informative book.
Casey McDaniel had never been so nervous in his life. In just ten minutes, The Meeting, as it would forever be known, would begin. Casey had every reason to believe that his performance over the next two hours would determine the fate of his career, his financial future, and the company he had built from scratch. 'How could my life have unravelled so quickly?' he wondered. In his latest page-turning work of business fiction, best-selling author Patrick Lencioni provides readers with another powerful and thought-provoking book, this one centred around a cure for the most painful yet underestimated problem of…
In my 20s, after always doing what I was “supposed” to, I found myself trapped in a relationship I wanted out of, in a job that barely paid the bills, and in a mindset of scarcity. After my birth control almost killed me, I dove into the mind-body connection that’s often stifled by sexism and societal expectations, becoming fascinated with pushing against the status quo and living more adventurously. I realized I needed to sincerely take my life decisions into my own hands. Since then, I’ve run ultramarathons, become an entrepreneur, and taught countless menstruators how to listen to their own bodies so they can build a life they love.
Why do women feel like we need to invite everyone to every party, throw weddings that are closer to our parents’ style than our own, and show up to networking nights that we know we won’t get anything out of?
I know this book is meant to be about hosting gatherings, but I’ve applied the principles to nearly everything I do in work and hobbies to add more intention, impact, and fulfillment. I’ve changed the way I sit at restaurants to encourage deeper conversations with friends. I’ve started to purposefully not invite certain people to certain parties since I know it would change the dynamic negatively for others. I’ve embraced the idea of “pop-up rules” at every event I host and expect guests to follow them so that the event is transformative and not boring.
Since reading Priya’s incredible framework, I’ve led extremely successful monthly events for my community, started…
"Hosts of all kinds, this is a must-read!" --Chris Anderson, owner and curator of TED
From the host of the New York Times podcast Together Apart, an exciting new approach to how we gather that will transform the ways we spend our time together—at home, at work, in our communities, and beyond.
In The Art of Gathering, Priya Parker argues that the gatherings in our lives are lackluster and unproductive--which they don't have to be. We rely too much on routine and the conventions of gatherings when we should focus on distinctiveness and the people involved. At a time when…
As an organizational psychologist, I am driven to study and work to improve work activities that are causing great frustration and not working effectively—meetings are the perfect fit. And, for 20 years I have been actively publishing in this space and have spoken to well over 100,000 leaders through my keynotes/events/videos. What excites me is that meeting science can truly help leaders, teams, and organizations. The books I recommend are well-aligned with the science, and can be difference makers. I hope you enjoy them and find them helpful.
The book takes on a very tricky meeting type, hybrid
meetings. It is easy to read and has a
nice set of evidence-based practices to elevate these meetings. As we move past
Covid, this is a helpful resource to managers as they meet in our new normal. I really enjoyed the discussion of challenges
and best practices from research to overcome.
Discover the challenges and opportunities of hybrid meetings with this science-based guide from an Emmy-award winning communications expert and renowned organizational psychologist
As remote work becomes less of an unusual exception and more of an everyday necessity, hybrid meetings-meetings in which some attendees are physically present while others are virtually present-are becoming the norm.
In Suddenly Hybrid: Managing the Modern Meeting, Emmy award-winning communications expert Karin Reed and veteran industrial and organizational psychologist Dr. Joseph A. Allen deliver a practical and actionable framework for attending, hosting, and managing hybrid meetings. The authors draw from their extensive experience in research and…
My fields at the University of Notre Dame, where I teach and do research, are philosophy and literature, and I have often been attracted to broader questions. I found ugliness to be a topic of considerable fascination, also for students, and yet it has almost never been addressed. I wrote the book to discover for myself what ugliness is and what it has to do with beauty.
When I was interviewing for a position at Notre Dame, the campus museum had an exhibit of illustrations for Dante’sInferno, which reinforced to me the fascination of Dante.
When I began teaching the work a few years later, my students were engrossed by its riveting portrayals of moral ugliness. They were also amazed that Dante places even popes in hell. The work has so inspired my students that one of them submitted her final paper in terza rima, the form Dante uses, and another reflected on where precisely in hell she might belong.
This beautifully translated bilingual edition contains extensive, helpful commentary.
“Probably the most finely accomplished and ... most enduring" translation (Los Angeles Times Book Review) of this essential work of world literature—from a renowned scholar and master teacher of Dante and an accomplished poet.
“The Hollanders … act as latter-day Virgils, guiding us through the Italian text that is printed on the facing page.” —The Economist
The epic grandeur of Dante’s masterpiece has inspired readers for 700 years, andhas entered the human imagination. But the further we move from the late medieval world of Dante, the more a rich understanding and enjoyment of the poem depends on knowledgeable guidance. Robert…
So much of our culture and our fiction comes from taking older stories and ideas and reworking, blending, and adapting them into new forms. This cultural mixture has gifted us with some of the greatest works of English literature, and I’ve always been surprised and delighted to discover what people can pull out of older works and make. It’s why my first novels have followed the theme, and why I will always have time to check out a new story that builds on older ideas to create something new.
Jenna Moran is an under-appreciated author who combines whimsy and darkness in equal measure, created worlds that are at once familiar and strange. This bittersweet picture book is her at her finest, accompanied by glorious artwork by Elizabeth Sherry as she tells the story of a picture-book world attacked by an invasion of terrible, otherworldly things—Ordinary Objects.
Earth is full. Now, when there's a new ordinary thing, it doesn't have anywhere to go. A plague of blankets, chairs, and other horrors unleashes itself upon the picture-book realm. Warning: content is fearsome.
"O.O
that is a very creepy children's book.
O.O" - C.E. Murphy, author of the Walker Papers series, The Negotiator Trilogy, and the Inheritor's Cycle.
I am and have always been fascinated with supernatural creatures, particularly if they have horns and dwell in the dark swamps of wooded hinterlands. I spent a greater part of my childhood in the African bush. A formative experience was the day an isangoma(witchdoctor) cast knuckle bones at me in a particularly energetic frenzy. Rather than being scared, I was fascinated by the power these little bones had to command spirits and creatures I had only seen in my nightmares. An obsession was born.
This one is a little bit of a cheeky pick, because, at the time of writing, it hasn’t been published yet. I was lucky enough to get an early read and I loved it. Miguela is frustrated by the tight reign her Puerto-Rican grandmother keeps on her. She is bored with going to church, going to school, being forbidden to date, or basically anything fun. So when Sam, a new gorgeous boy comes to her school and she feels an irresistible pull towards him, she doesn’t resist very hard. Until Sam learns of Sam’s family roots… and has to break up with him. But you don’t just break up with Sam without potentially apocalyptic consequences. This book reminded me of a YA Imaginary Friend by Chbosky, only funny. And why did I pick it for this creepy creature list? Well, the creatures in this one definitely freaked me out. Despite…
Fans of Undead Girl Gang and The Babysitters Coven will love Breakup from Hell, a witty YA rom-com with a supernatural twist, starring horror novel obsessed Mica Angeles, who discovers the guy she fell for comes straight out of one of her beloved books.
Miguela Angeles is tired. Tired of her abuela keeping secrets, especially about her heritage. Tired of her small Vermont town and hanging out at the same places with the same friends she's known forever. So when another boring Sunday trip to church turns into a run-in with Sam, a mysterious hottie in town on vacation, Mica…
I read Lolita as a college freshman and laughed out loud as Nabokov made me love the goofy, intelligent, and clearly sociopathic Humbert Humbert. Nabokov’s fun was palpable; it made me want to write. And knee-jerk criticisms of Lolita drove me crazy – how can people take themselves so seriously as to be offended by fictional characters? To me, an author’s ability to inspire genuine empathy for characters with distorted, irreverent, or socially unacceptable perspectives is both genius and riotously fun (something that people too busy looking for a reason to be offended will unfortunately never appreciate). Hope you enjoy this book list for people who don’t take themselves too seriously!
The Other Hotel was my first Jack Stroke book and after the first few pages I was hooked.
The writing is easy, authentic, and unpretentious – reading it quickly made me feel like I was hanging out with an old friend. The plot is twisted, the characters are off-the-hook, and Stroke has the unique capacity to inject a sense of apathetic calm into situations where all hell is breaking loose – making the book a tremendous amount of fun.
I became a science journalist because I’ve been fascinated by the natural world around me for as long as I can remember. I also always loved imagining another world or realm, ever since I first read The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe and The Wizard of Oz series as a child. So when I was writing my blog, Gory Details, at National Geographic, I naturally started to get curious about places around the world that are linked to legends of otherworldly realms. Now, as an author, I’ve had the chance to explore these places for myself, and I hope readers will enjoy going on the journey with me!
When I needed a concise overview of the history of hell, from Egyptian Duat to modern-day versions of Christian hell and all the many other versions around the world, this book gave me just what I needed. The tone and language are lighthearted, which keeps the subject interesting without getting too dark or depressing.
I liked how the authors break down hell into its common components, asking questions like “Where is hell?” and “Who’s in charge?” and giving a sense of how people have answered these questions in different places and times. I walked away feeling like we were all connected through this shared history of curiosity about the afterlife.
While the subject matter of the books on my list may vary, the thing that ties them together is the suspenseful tension that builds and keeps the reader on edge. The unexpected twists and turns are the "secret sauce" that adds flavor and fervor. I like the way each of these books keeps your mind from wandering by combining vivid imagery with a compelling storyline. As an author myself, I am always fascinated by those who make it look so easy and effortless. And as an avid reader, I constantly search for these kind of books; the kind that make you feel as if you just have to keep reading.
I've always heard there are two sides to every story. Generally, this means a good side and a bad, or at least one with some sort of a redeeming perspective. But what does a person do when both sides are equally hellish? For Maiya, it means she truly is Daydream's Daughter and Nightmare's Friend. It seems as though the insufferable miseries will never end. This book is deeply emotional and compelling. The author describes the events in vivid detail creating a sense for the reader of being there in the midst of it all. The book immediately captures your attention, and page after page keeps you wondering what will happen next. An excellent story by an excellent author.
*THIS BOOK IS FOR AUDIENCES 18 YEARS AND OLDER. NOT SUITABLE FOR CHILDREN* "She was one horrible mess. Always looking over her shoulder and avoiding becoming too friendly with the neighbors. That anxiety stemmed from a horrible place. Always fearing that someone would recognize her face, she kept to herself and didn't go out much. When she did, no matter the season, she wore some kind of hat or covering on her head, enough to shield her face. Walter never understood why she was such a loner, avoiding people at all cost and just being very anti-social outside of the…
