Goodreads tells me I finished 74 books in 2025, some 35,000 pages. I almost made it to 75, but just ran out of time… Most were nonfiction, but mostly history, philosophy and science, so not exactly classic LinkedIn fodder.
Here’s a few I’d definitely recommend to better navigate the world of business / work (in no particular order):
1) Alchemy, by Rory Sutherland
– a useful corrective to the idea that logic and reason should drive strategy, and a timely reminder (in this age of GenAI probability-driven “thinking”) that it’s often necessary to go lateral to succeed. But Sutherland’s a marketer at heart – of *course* he’d say that…
2) The Art of Explanation, by Ros Atkins
– a guide to more effective communication, borrowing from a couple of decades’ experience in journalism; a book many non-journalists could do with reading, and almost the opposite of Sutherland’s approach.
3) Economics, The User’s Guide, by Ha-Joon Chang
– as the debate about AI bubbles and the future of the job market drags on, this is one of the very best overviews of the history and post-financial crisis state of economic thinking I’ve come across; thought-provoking and accessible via short, clear chapters. An excellent read.
4) The Corporation in the 21st Century, by John Kay
– a slight cheat as I’ve got a couple of dozen pages to go, but this is an excellent companion to the previous one, providing a potted history of how we’ve got to where we are in the world of business organisations and ecosystems, and how it all seems to be changing. Again.
5) The Power Law, by Sebastian Mallaby
– a deep dive into the history, mentality and working methods of the venture capitalists that have done so much to influence the tech industry and global economy over the last few decades. It helpfully shows that Elon Musk (among others) has been problematic for years…
—
Of course, all of these were written before the rise of GenAI and the advent of Trump 2, so.who knows how helpful they’ll be in navigating 2026?