I know most of you out there in the blogosphere marvel in constant wonder of my ability to entertain you via the internet while focusing on my studies and maintaining a healthy marriage. The answer is simple. I do a lot of reading. Also, I don’t focus on my studies. But seriously, you should read. A lot. Here are the next ten book son my reading list:

1. Velvet Elvis – Rob Bell
2. Freakonomics – Levitt and Dubner
3. Divine Conspiracy – Dallas Willard
4. The Leadership Engine – Noel Tichy
5. No Compromise: The Life Story of Keith Green – Green and Hazard
6. The Discoverers – Daniel Boorstin
7. Praise Habit – David Crowder
8. Mindfulness – Ellen Langer
9. The Practice of the Presence of God – Brother Lawrence
10. Spy – Ted Bell

As you may have noticed, I try to cover a wide range of topics and genres. For every ten book I read I try to include spiritual, leadership, history, biography, fiction, and some randomness. If you haven’t already, you should think about creating a reading list for yourself and becoming very intentional about what you’re reading. John Wooden says, “Ten years from now you will be the same person you are today except for the people you’ve met and the books you’ve read.”

In The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell discusses the small, seemingly unimportant details that caused major movements such as Sesame Street and Blue’s Clues to “Tip”. It’s a great read that highlights the importance of the small details in any major cultural, economic, or behavioral shift. This is a great book for anyone. It sheds light on some aspects of communication and marketing that cause an idea or product to “stick”. Some take-aways from my reading:

• “[John] Wesley realized that if you wanted to bring about fundamental change in people’s belief and behavior, a change that would persist and serve as an exampl to others, you needed to create a community around them, where those new beliefs could be practiced and expressed and nurtured.”

• “The success of any kind of social epidemic is heavily dependent on the involvement of people with a particular and rare set of social gifts.”

• “Persuasion often works in ways we do not appreciate.”

• “The lesson of stickiness is that there is a simple way to package information that, under the right circumstances, can make it irresistible. All you have to do is find it.”

• “The power of context says that what really matters is little things.”

• “If you add up the meaning of the Stanford prison experiment and the New York subway experiment, they suggest that it is possible to be a better person on a clean street or in a clean subway than in one littered with trash and graffiti.”

• “The figure of 150 seems to represent the maximum number of individuals with whom we can have a genuinely social relationship, the kind of relationship that goes with knowing who they are and how they relate to us.”

• “When each person has group-acknowledged responsibility for particular tasks and facts, greater efficiency is inevitable.”

• “If anyone wants to start an epidemic…he or she has to find some person or some means to translate the message of the innovators into something the rest of us can understand.”

I have a test in Hymnology today at 8am. Yes, this class is as bad as the text title would suggest. It is a class surveying hymnody. Rest assured, these are not the cute, inspiring stories you hear of Johan so-and-so writing “Tis So Sweet” under the harshest of circumstances while curled up in the hull of a ship during an unsurvivable storm. The questions I will be answering today will be more along the lines of, “What was the pattern and metrical structure of the Geneva songs?” My motivation for actually attending this class tomorrow is that I know it will allow me to become a better person graduate.