January is a month for closing and beginning for me. I am doing lots of purging and hatching jobs these days! For this reason, I feel obliged to wrap up my readings that I’ve completed last year. I intended to finish around twenty books when the year started but made around fifteen or so. ‘Come on Jay, twenty is nothing!’, you might say! But writing book reviews was somehow a different story and, importantly, I even feel content because writing as a way of creation rewarded me in the form of personal growth and feeling of achievement.

So in sum, fifteen books per category: Two in Finance and Investment, four in Economics, three in Strategy, two in Self Help, two in Self Development, one in Philosophy, one in Leadership and one in solely Technology. And surprisingly, among them, five books were related with the digital economy. My reviews for these fifteen books on my blog are all in-depth.

I aim to be well-balanced in my reading usually, but last year I couldn’t pick up science, politics and more history-related books from my selections. Hope I can finish them in 2018. Also, I found I read more technology-related books last year, which I didn’t intend initially. But my learning curve was steep and I appreciated the opportunity to get to know more about workings of the digital economy in our time.

I have rated books based on two criteria: ‘Ideas'(did the book expand my scope or influence on my personal growth?) and ‘Delivery'(was the development of ideas in consistent and convincing logical frame?). My philosophy on book reviews: drop any book that doesn’t deserve more than 4 out of total mark 5. Luckily, this round I didn’t have to drop any from my selections. Below, I list them without ranking.

What was your best business book in 2017? Can you share with me so that I can add them to my list? I look forward to hearing from you!

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(Rating) (Ideas _ / Delivery _ ) Book Title, Author, (Category), __ pages

(5) (I 5/ D 5) More Than You Know, M Mauboussin (Finance/Investment), 257p

(5) (I 5/ D 5) Why Nations Fail, D Acemoglu, (Political Science/Economics), 464p

(5) (I 5/ D 5) Street Smarts, J Rogers, (Investment/Autobiography), 249p

(5) (I 5/ D 5) The Strategist, C Montgomery, (Strategy/Leadership), 148p

(5) (I 5/ D 5) Conversations with God, N Walsch, (Self Help/Spirituality), 211p

(4) (I 5/ D 4) The End of Alchemy, M King, (Economics/Finance), 370p

(4) (I 4/ D 5) The Zero Marginal Cost Society, J Rifkin, (Economics/Technology), 380p

(4) (I 4/ D 5) Zero To One, P Thiel, (Strategy/Technology), 195p

(4) (I 5/ D 4) The Seventh Sense, J Ramo, (Strategy/Technology), 311p

(4) (I 4/ D 5) The Fourth Industrial Revolution, K Schwab, (Leadership/Technology), 172p

(4) (I 5/ D 4) The Leader Who Had No Title, R Sharma, (Self Development) 196p

(4) (I 5/ D 4) Make Yourself Unforgettable, D Carnegie Trainings (Self Development), 221p

(4) (I 4/ D 5) The Wisdom of Insecurity, A Watts (Philosophy), 152p

(4) (I 4/ D 5) How Adam Smith Can Change Your Life, R Roberts, (Philosophy/Economics), 239p

(4) (I 4/ D 4) The Blockchain Revolution, D Tapscott (Technology), 311p

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