Our Favorite Books for Q4 2021
We’re sharing our list of favorite books for Q4 so you can head into the new year on whichever path you’re feeling called to go down. Whether you want to double-down on productivity practices or glean insight with meaningful moments about philosophy and communication, check out our list of books to hunker down with until the new year (and maybe you’ll want to knock a couple of items off your gift list, too). Because if there was ever a season to cozy up with a good book, it’s the season that we’re in now.
New Releases from Friends of PF
Permission to Glow by Kristoffer Carter: In this transformational guide to conscious leadership, Kristoffer Carter shows you how to transcend the overwhelm and disruption of daily life and step into your power. With a unique blend of irreverent humor, pop culture references, and spiritual insight, he reveals the 4 Permissions that offer you the fuel to glow, and The 7 Compassionate Laws of Personal Change for activating and living these permissions.
The Widest Net by Pam Slim: Do you think you know your ideal customer? Think again. Many businesses create an ideal consumer profile – aiming all their sales and marketing efforts towards this single type of person – and end up missing out on endless opportunities to sell their services or products. Award-winning business coach, speaker, and author Pam Slim has helped thousands of entrepreneurs around the world start, sustain, and scale their businesses. In her latest book, she explains how to build strong diverse relationships, identify and connect with new partners, expand markets, generate leads, and find new customers in places you may never have considered.
Tracking Wonder by Jeffrey Davis: Discover how the lost art of wonder can help you cultivate greater creativity, resilience, meaning, and joy as you bring your greatest contributions to life. Rich with wisdom, inspiring stories, and practical tools, Tracking Wonder invites us to explore how the lost art of wonder can inspire a life of greater joy, possibility, and purpose.
About Communication
Mindset by Carol Dweck: In this book, Dweck shows how success can be dramatically influenced by how we think about our talents and abilities. People with a fixed mindset – those who believe that abilities are fixed – are less likely to flourish than those with a growth mindset – those who believe that abilities can be developed. Mindset reveals how great people can put this idea to use to foster outstanding accomplishment.
The Upside of Your Dark Side by Todd Kashdan: Drawing on years of scientific research and a wide array of real-life examples including sports, parenting, education, business, and more, The Upside of Your Dark Side is a refreshing reality check that shows us how we can truly maximize our potential. With an appreciation of our entire psychological toolkit, we become whole – which allows us to climb the highest peaks and handle the deepest valleys.
Fierce Conversations by Susan Scott: The master teacher of positive change through powerful communication, Susan Scott wants her readers to succeed. To do that, she explains, one must transform everyday conversations by employing effective ways to get the message across.
About Productivity and Effectiveness
Crossing the Chasm by Geoffrey A. Moore: This bestselling guide created a new game plan for marketing in high-tech industries, and how to bring cutting-edge products to progressively larger markets. This edition provides new insights into the realities of high-tech marketing and is essential reading for anyone with a stake in the world's most exciting marketplace.
Dig Your Well Before You’re Thirsty by Harvey Mackay: This book teaches you how to get what you want from the world through networking. For everyone from the sales rep facing a career-making deal to the entrepreneur in search of capital, Dig Your Well explains how meeting these needs should be no more than a few calls away.
The Art of Work by Jeff Goins: Through personal experience, compelling case studies, and current research on the mysteries of motivation and talent, Jeff shows readers how to find their vocation and what to expect along the way.
About Philosophy
On Liberty by John Stuart Mill: Published in 1859, John Stuart Mill's On Liberty presented one of the most eloquent defenses of individual freedom in nineteenth-century social and political philosophy. Mill's passionate advocacy of spontaneity, individuality, and diversity, along with his contempt for compulsory uniformity and the despotism of popular opinion, has attracted both admiration and condemnation.
The Metaphysical Club by Louis Menand: The Metaphysical Club was an informal group that met in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1872, to talk about ideas. The club was probably in existence for about nine months. No records were kept. The one thing we know that came out of it was an idea – an idea about ideas. This book is the story of that idea.
A Guide for the Perplexed by E. F. Schumacher: Schumacher says we need maps: a "map of knowledge" and a "map of living." The concern of the mapmaker is to find for everything its proper place. Things out of place tend to get lost; they become invisible and their proper places tend to be filled by other things that ought not to be there at all and therefore serve to mislead. This book teaches us to be our own mapmakers in order to enjoy a real relationship with the world.
Tao Te Ching by Lao Tzu, translated by Derek Lin: The enduring wisdom of the Tao Te Ching can become a companion for your own spiritual journey. Reportedly written by a sage named Lao Tzu over 2,500 years ago, the Tao Te Ching is one of the most succinct – and yet among the most profound – spiritual texts ever written. Derek Lin's insightful commentary, along with his new translation from the original Chinese will inspire your spiritual journey and enrich your everyday life.