Summer Reading Gallery

Timothy Arnold, CMP, CMM, regional vice president,

HPN Global:

I read over 150 books a year, so I always have something on my stack to read. I just finished All the Light We Cannot See, by Anthony Doerr, which was amazing. The best nonfiction book I have read recently is Undeniable, by Bill Nye, just a wonderful book about the beauty of evolution.

Luann Edwards, CMP, CMM, social media strategist,

FM Global:

I’ve been reading a mix of both fun/light and educational books. Fun/light: I just finished The Divers Clothes Lie Empty, by Vendela Vida, and 168 Hours—You Have More Time Than You Think, by Laura Vanderkam.

Holly Duckworth, CAE, CMP, CEO, Leadership Solutions International:

I'm always reading a business book of some sort. With so many author friends coming out with books this year, I can't keep up. Here are a few scattered around my home and office:

The Virtual Presenter's Handbook, by Roger Courville, sponsored by Citrix GoToMeeting

A New Design for Living, by Ernest Holmes

I also have an advance copy of Jeffrey Hayzlett's book, Think Big, Act Bigger, which is coming out September 2015.

Martin Sirk, CEO, ICCA:

Martin’s (nerdy) summer books, both in hardback—luckily my Platinum status on Skyteam gives me extra weight allowance!

• Thomas Piketty’s Capital—lots of impressive evidence and strong analysis; rather flaky on policy prescriptions, with his critics concentrating on the latter rather than the former—I haven’t seen anyone debunk his data yet.

• Neal Stephenson’s Seveneves—slightly less brilliant than his incredible, historical epic Baroque Cycle – Quicksilver/The Confusion/System of the World, but still one of the best and most intelligent sci-fi books of the last decade, up there with Iain M Banks, and hinting at a giant space opera to come.

I also dipped into Andrew Keen’s The Internet is not the Answer—I’m starting to think this has been my "Summer of the Skeptic"!

Nancy Zavada, principal, MeetGreen:

Summer is my escapist reading time—I just finished The Night Circus, by Erin Morgenstern, and next up is Empire of Blue Water by Stephan Talty.

David Peckinpaugh, president, Maritz Travel Company:

I always have great intentions to do both recreational reading and also some deeper work-related reading … with mixed results. The current book that I am “staring at” is Leaders Eat Last by Simon Sinek.

Thomas Sullivan, president and founder, Rockpointe Corporation:

This summer I am reading Pharmaphobia by Thomas Stossel, MD, and Killing Patton by Bill O'Reilly.

Sue Pelletier, editor, MeetingsNet:

I gobble down novels like they're M&Ms, especially when I'm on vacation, so I've read dozens of books this summer. The one that keeps haunting me though—even more so now since I heard researcher and psychologist Sherry Turkle speak at the ASAE Annual Conference about machines, conversation, and empathy, is Speak: A Novel, by Louisa Hall. It's about artificial intelligence and the need for human connections, and it is brilliant.

Betsy Bair, content director, MeetingsNet:

My book club typically chooses a really long book to read over the summer, since we take a break from meeting until fall. This summer it's No Ordinary Time, Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in World War II, by Doris Kearns Goodwin. It's a good history lesson (won the Pulitzer Prize) as well as a delicious insight into life at the White House during those extraordinary years. It's on my Kindle, while in hard cover by my bedside is my fiction book for the summer, All the Light We Cannot See. I second Timothy Arnold's review of this: a must-read for people who love lyrical writing.