What SmartCompany’s editor in chief Simon Crerar is reading over the summer break

Escaping from doom scrolling, I read a lot during the COVID years. This year, my family and I moved to rural Tasmania, and the competing attractions of apple trees, chooks and dirt took precedence. 

I typically read an eclectic range of non-fiction – this year’s highlights include Stan Grant’s The Queen is Dead, New York Times Jerusalem correspondent Isabel Kershner’s story of Israel’s fractious tribes The Land of Hope and Fear, and my colleague Gina Rushton’s forensic analysis of motherhood, The Most Important Job In The World.

And of course, I’ve been reading with a regional lens, including Chickenology: The Ultimate Encyclopedia by backyard chook pioneer Barbara Sandri, The Dirty Chef by local Huon Valley farmer Matthew Evans, and How Wild Things Are by local wild forager Analiese Gregory.

At SmartCompany we enjoy a two-week festive shutdown: the best opportunity for reading all year. My reading list is unashamedly business-focused. 

I’m always looking for suggestions, so please let me know what you’ve enjoyed this year: I’ve already ordered my colleague Tegan’s fascinating suggestion, Stalin’s Wine Cellar, described by one reviewer as “the Raiders of the Lost Ark of wine”. Sounds right up my street.

I’d love to hear what you’ll be diving into, please email me here.

Here’s what I’ll be reading over the break:

Discipline is Destiny by Ryan Holiday

I’m a total philosophy/self-help nerd, have well-thumbed copies of Meditations by Marcus Aurelius and Seneca’s Letters, and read pretty much everything by self-styled Stoic philosopher Ryan Holiday, the bestselling author of Stillness is the Key and The Obstacle is the Way, who lives a dream life running a bookshop in rural Texas.

From catastrophic military overreaches to career-destroying habits, without self-discipline, we are lost before we can even begin.

The second release in Holiday’s series tackling the four core Stoic virtues of courage, temperance, justice and wisdom, Discipline is Destiny argues that the most important battles in history have always been with the self. I’m up for the fight!

Material World by Ed Conway

Sand, salt, iron, copper, oil and lithium. Described by Conway as the six most crucial substances in human history, they built our world from the Dark Ages to the present day, and the economics editor of Sky News UK argues that they will transform our future. 

As we wrestle with climate change, energy crises and global conflicts, this book promises to explain why these materials matter more than ever and to reveal how – despite the digitally dominated lives most of us lead – it is rocks and minerals that power the world, and the hidden battle to control them will shape our geopolitical future. 

From Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs, and Steel to Yuval Noah Harari’s Sapiens, I’ve always loved an alternative history of humanity, and this looks a corker.

Out of Office by Charlie Warzel & Anne Helen Petersen

Prior to early 2020, I could never have imagined doing a job like mine mostly from home, yet thanks to the pandemic – and the trust of my boss – I’m a year into permanently rethinking work.

Former colleagues of mine at BuzzFeed, Warzel and Petersen moved to Montana in 2017, working remotely years before the rest of us were forced by COVID to do the same.

I’m very aware that the opportunity to work from home is a massive privilege, but have also been learning that WFH is certainly not without its challenges: remote work can make us happier and more productive, but also profoundly challenges companies’ ability to foster workplace culture.

And actually the biggest beneficiary may not be us, or our employers, but our communities. “Anything that allows you to get outside of your own little sphere, and also understand who needs care in your world … that is what flexible work can help provide,” says Petersen.

Right Kind of Wrong by Amy Edmondson

Failure used to be seen as something to be avoided at all costs. Now the Silicon Valley mantra is “fail fast, fail often”. But what is a good failure, and what is bad? How do we fail well?

That’s what Harvard Business School professor Edmondson – “the world’s most influential organisational psychologist” – promises to reveal here, based on a lifetime’s research into the science behind psychological safety.

Apparently “good failures are those that bring us valuable new information that simply could not have been gained any other way”. Edmondson introduces the three archetypes of failure – simple, complex and intelligent – and promises to explain how to harness the “revolutionary potential” of the good ones while eliminating the bad.

I’m looking forward to learning more about human fallibility and sharpening my ability to take intelligent risks and “bounce forward” after setbacks.

The Coming Wave by Mustafa Suleyman

This year has been absolutely dominated by the exponential growth of artificial intelligence. I’ve been trying my best to keep up, but one thing is very obvious: we ain’t seen nothing yet. That’s the premise of this “extraordinary” and “essential” analysis by Suleyman, the co-founder of pioneering UK-headquartered AI company DeepMind, acquired by Google in 2014.

He predicts that we will soon live surrounded by AIs: artificial intelligence organising our lives, operating our businesses, and running our core government services. He argues that these forces will create immense prosperity but also threaten the nation-state.

I’m an eternal optimist but have watched enough Blade Runner and Minority Report to be deeply concerned by what may be ahead. Many of AI’s preeminent thinkers are warning that we are sleepwalking into disaster: Suleyman establishes ‘the containment problem’ – the task of maintaining control of AI – as the essential challenge of our age.

It certainly sounds slightly more urgent than snoozing in front of the Boxing Day Test, though I can’t promise I won’t be doing that as well as scaring myself shitless.

Hoping you get time with a good book this summer, terrifying or not!