the books pushed upon us at work

1. How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie was suggested by Pierre Kerbage when he ran Network Logistic, Inc. which is that place that became White Glove which then became mindSHIFT. Copies of the book were just given out in one meeting and I read a chunk of mine. However, there was no follow up and I knew no one else was reading it so... whatever.
2. Clean Code by Robert C. Martin was selectively read (some chapters, not others) at my next place of employment in a book club format. We all talked every week about the reading for the week.
3. The 360 Degree Leader by John C. Maxwell was similarly digested in a weekly way at the @hand Corporation and this is an example of a book not to read. It's mostly filler. There are some gold nuggets of wisdom here and there in the sea of nothing like "don't chase two rabbits" yet it's mostly an exercise for the sake of an exercise. John tells you not to do anything at the expense of your family and that if you can't champion your leaders that you should probably find other employment and then turns around and suggests that it is admirable to "do what others won't" and an example of as much has a guy running out a bookstore to buy up all of the copies of a book with his own money to make them available when they were expected while the usual channel to facilitate as much had fallen through. Isn't that at the expense of his family? Why should I champion John as a leader?
4. Who Moved My Cheese? by Spencer Johnson, M.D. was just given to me at my current workplace and this is the best of the four. It was just handed to me without a coordinated effort to get my feedback as was the case with Dale Carnegie's book, but this book is a really easy read. You could maybe read it in one sitting. That made it easy for me to just do the reading and hand it back in so that someone else could enjoy it. Unlike John's book or, for that matter, Dale's book, this book isn't vaguely about improving oneself in a greater sense and instead focuses on something in particular, dealing with change. The lessons are that you should ask yourself how you would behave if you were not afraid and also that you should be able to laugh at yourself. The story inside is outright surreal which made it captivating. It seems like most authors have head trash telling them that analogies have to make sense, but as it turns out analogies can be wacky. You'll have to read it for yourself to see what I'm talking about. This gimmick makes the book really engaging. Supposedly the yellow brick road in the Wizard of Oz represents the 19th century gold standard. It's that sort of silly abstraction. Fun!