Vacation reading

Tomorrow I go on vacation. I am going to Norway. Around 10 days in a far out cabin by myself. Without electricity or wifi, but with a handful of books and a whole lot of silence. Exciting.

I thought I’d share which books I’m taking with me, primarily because I need some pointers on which ones to start with. I am pretty sure I’m not going to finish them all, but I have to at least read around a thousand pages. I can’t see why not.

“The Crowd” by Gustave Le Bon
I am currently pretty interested in group dynamics, crowd psychology and such. Pretty obvious since Connecta is currently spending a lot of time talking about collective intelligence, but to be honest I am really not very aware about the field. So after some googling and searching on LibraryThing I kept stumbling upon this rather classic book by Gustave Le Bon. I have never read a book on social psychology before, s that itself will probably be a test. Judging from the layout of the book it doesn’t seem quite as energetic as the books I’m used to reading, but I’ll give it a chance.

“Critical Mass” by Philip Ball
Moving from social psychology to modern physics, I got quite interested in this book after reading a few reviews. Judging by the cover and the title I thought it would just be some Gladwell lingobingo, but it seems valid. The book itself seems to be pretty intense though, so I’m very interested in hearing if anyone has any experiences with this book or it’s author?

“In Good Company” by Don Cohen and Laurence Prusak
I am having a lot of discussions around the term “Social Capital” these days. We are currently looking for a term to explain how to measure the value of e.g. relations in organizations. Today you would make a traditional ROI calculation looking at how efficient a team is, judging it entirely using “Physical Capital” as in cashflow, turnover etc. It seems that the term “Social Capital” has already been used in a lot of contexts, but not as much on an organizational scope. This book seems to deal with it though, I have not read much about it, just thought I had to bring it along and see what they think.

“Linked” by Albert-Laszlo Barabasi
This was a book that got quoted a lot at this years Reboot conference. Or at least I saw a lot of Barabasi quotes and went home googling to find out who he was. Seems he has written this rather interesting book that takes a look at relations and what the mean for everything from neurology to internet traffic. Seems like an easy read.

Apart from the books above I am also going to read some fiction books, I have an old Hemingway book lying around somewhere that I haven’t gotten through in the last few years, now must be the time. Oh and then I am also re-reading David Allen’s “Getting Things Done” for the third time. Previously I have just glanced through it or read a chapter here and there. I think it makes a lot more sense to read the entire book. I also have a lot of printed web articles and my 80 GB video iPod is full of talks by everyone from Clay Shirky (hat tip to Claus) to Tom Davenport (hat tip to Tine).