I’m particularly thankful for the public library system that provides me with access to a huge variety of books. Sometimes I just browse the online catalog by subject, and order them via interlibrary loan. I look at subjects like Business Presentations, Decision Making, Information Visualization, Oral Communication, Problem Solving, Public Speaking, and Visual Communication.
But when I pick them up at my local Lake Hazel branch of the Ada County Library, I also make sure to check their new book shelves. And occasionally I go downtown to the main Boise Public Library to look through their new book shelves.
Downtown is where I found the 2021 second edition of the very interesting Roadside Geology of Idaho book by Paul K. Link, Shawn Willsey, and Keegan Schmidt. One of the ‘new’ things described there is amazing. Lake Bonneville was the much larger predecessor of the Great Salt Lake. It was about the size of Lake Michigan – 300 miles long by 135 miles wide (and 1000 feet deep). About 17,500 years ago it overflowed in an epic flood. The level dropped 400 feet – mostly in a couple months, and what remained became the Great Salt Lake. A huge cascade of water down the Snake River tumbled huge boulders like bowling balls. It produced ‘melon gravel’ –piles of rounded rocks the size of watermelons. Later I bought a copy of that book to keep in my car.
My local Lake Hazel Branch is where I saw the 2021 book by T.D. Jakes titled Don’t Drop the Mic: the power of your words can change the world. When I checked the catalog, I was surprised to find it only was listed under two subjects: Communication – Religious aspects – Christianity and Conversation - Religious aspects – Christianity.
Under the subject of Problem Solving I found Dan Heath’s 2020 book Upstream: The quest to solve problems before they happen. I also blogged about that topic in a May 30, 2019 post titled A very worthwhile article on dealing with presentation distractions. Another post on December 20, 2019 is titled The joy of safety interlocks. A decade ago I did a pair of posts, one on February 8, 2011 titled Mistake-proofing your presentation outfit and another on February 18, 2011 titled More on mistake-proofing: lock out what you don’t want to happen.
The inspiration for this post is an article by Jesse Wisnewski at Forbes on November 23, 2021 titled Three things the books you read say about you and your work, which are:
They can show you who you’re going to become
They can reveal what you’re going to know
They can help make a path for your future
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