Just read, in quick succession a few more books. It felt good to knock out #6 in a single day. And yet I’m still 20+ books behind my goal pace of one per week, though.
#4: There’s No Elevator to the Top: A Leading Headhunter Shares the Advancement Strategies of the World’s Most Successful Executives 
Occasional flashes of useful career navigation advice, but disorganized, rambling, and annoyingly preachy for the most part. I wouldn’t re-read it, but I don’t regret reading it for the few things I picked up.
#5: Prisoner of X: 20 Years in the Hole at Hustler Magazine
Hustler editorial big cheese’s hilariously ribald account of a truly bizarre organization. Left it on a plane after I was done reading. Wonder who picked it up? I learned quite a bit about Larry Flynt Publishing, about Hustler editorial structure — stuff I care a lot about given my journalism background — and learned some neat smut factoids.
#6: Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex
The best of the three — mostly because the writer was more talented and the material better researched. The book took me on a roller-coaster ride of emotional lows (horror at how recently medical professionals were performing the equivalent of sexual lobotomies and how backwards society is on this topic) and highs (many genuine laugh-out-loud moments at the absurdity of it all). Also genuinely illuminating and instructive on the topic of research done well and done poorly. Loved this one, but not for the squeamish.
Nearest the top in my daunting stack of unfinished books:
- Billion-Dollar Lessons: What You Can Learn from the Most Inexcusable Business Failures of the Last 25 Years
- Competing on Analytics
- The Numerati
- Super Crunchers
- Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (no joke)
- The House of Mondavi
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