On your nightstand now:
Todd:
Here Comes Everybody by Clay Shirky (the relatively new paperback edition). It's brilliant, the best "big idea" take I have seen on sociology. Minding the Store edited by Robert Coles and Albert LaFarge, a wonderful anthology of fiction that has business at its center. The New Kings of Non-Fiction edited by Ira Glass. Glass says we are in a golden age for nonfiction writing. I agree. The book benefits 826 Valencia.
Jack:
House of Cards by William D. Cohan, Spade and Archer by Joe Gores and Bob Dylan: The Essential Interviews edited by Jonathan Cott.
Favorite book when you were a child:
Todd:
I was a huge fan of the Encyclopedia Brown series. I read every edition that my school library had, and at the time that was probably every one of the series that was in print. Leroy, as his parents referred him to, was a kid that every geek and nerd in the world could find their reflection in.
Jack:
Dumbo.
Your top five authors:
Todd:
Orson Scott Card, Michael Lewis, Roger Lowenstein, Seth Godin, Kevin Kelly.
Jack:
John D. MacDonald, James Lee Burke, Charles Fishman, Michael Lewis, John Byrne.
Book you've faked reading:
Todd:
Don't know if I have. I have no problem telling folks I have never read War and Peace or Pride and Prejudice.
Jack:
The Fifth Discipline by Peter Senge and Competitive Strategy by Michael Porter.
Book you're an evangelist for:
Todd:
Made to Stick by Chip Heath and Dan Heath is a book I have been singing the praises of since I saw the manuscript in 2006. This is a book everyone should read. We are all in the business of influence whether as managers, teachers or leaders. Made to Stick gives some great tools for how to make yourself more effective.
Jack:
Time and Again by Jack Finney and Shoeless Joe by W. P. Kinsella.
Book you've bought for the cover:
Todd:
The Great Ideas series from Penguin. These are selected pieces from important works from Paine to Nietzsche to Orwell. They are works in the public commons, but the debossed covers are beautiful and tactile. You have to pick them up. They are developed in the U.K. and eventually appear in the U.S. I think they have just come out with the third series of these wonderful little books.
Jack:
Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil by John Berendt.
Book that changed your life:
Todd:
Purple Cow by Seth Godin. In 2003, I was working with my father in his sheet metal fabrication business and trying to create awareness for the company. The subtitle of Grodin's book, Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable, was the insight we needed to change our thinking. The market barely knew our little four-person shop existed, and we needed a way to get some attention. We focused our marketing to a single industry segment, developed a remarkable marketing kit and doubled our customer base in 12 months. All that from a book that showed up on my doorstep in a milk carton.
Jack:
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig and The Age of Unreason by Charles Handy.
Favorite line from a book:
Todd:
"As for my role, I got him pregnant."--Mel Ziegler speaking of his business partner Bill Rosenzweig as they developed the concept for the Republic of Tea. They later wrote a book by the same name about their interchanges when the initial idea was forming.
Jack:
"Three years ago at dusk on a spring evening, when the sky was a robin's egg blue and the wind as soft as a day-old chick, I was sitting on the verandah of my farm house in eastern Iowa when a voice very clearly said to me, 'If you build it, he will come.'"--Shoeless Joe by W.P. Kinsella. God, I wish I could write like this!
Book you most want to read again for the first time:
Todd:
That is a tough question. I tend to read something once and not look back. The process of reading a book the second time is hard, because I read too quick, skipping passages, because it seems so familiar. So, I am not sure I have found that book yet.
Jack:
Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand and the Civil War Trilogy by Shelby Foote.