15 Eclectic Summer Reading Lists

Summer/beach reading lists are irresistible. I compiled some of the best in 2013, and earlier this month I tackled one specific topic in Bitcoin Beach Reading.

In the spirit of the great variety of summer reading guides of all types, here are some of the most eye-catching of the year so far, with special emphasis on business, leadership, technology, personal finance and self-improvement:

BloombergBusiness: These Are Wall Street’s Must-Read Books of the Summer
Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business: Faculty Summer Reading Recommendations 2015
Entrepreneur:  The 7 Books Bill Gates Wants You to Read This Summer
Forbes: Profitable Summer Reads: 7 New Investment Classics
GOBankingRates: 25 Best Personal Finance Books for Your Summer Reading List
Informationweek.com: 10 Geekiest Beach Reads of 2015
Military Times: 10 new books: Something to read at the beach or on base
The New Yorker: What we’re reading this summer
Opensource.com: The 2015 open source summer reading list
Stanford Graduate School of Business: Seven Business Books for Your Summer Reading List: Top selections from alumni entrepreneurs around the world
TED: Your summer reading list: 70+ book picks from TED speakers and attendees
The University of Texas at Austin: Spend Your Summer Reading the Books UT Professors Love
USA TODAY: 25 hot books for summer
The Wall Street Journal: 10 Beach Books from J.P. Morgan’s Summer Reading List
The Washington Post: A great leadership reading list — without any business books on it

What strikes me about so many of these suggestions is striving to become a better person, inside and outside the workplace. That particularly pertains to leadership, and is reflected in Two Books that Belong in Every CEO’s Beach Bag, a Forbes.com post by Christopher B. Nelson, President of St. John’s College in Annapolis, Maryland, a liberal arts school in which students engage in particularly challenging reading. So it’s no surprise that Nelson’s recommendations are The Prince by Niccolò Machiavelli and Plutarch’s Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans.

“I realize that most CEOs do not have long, empty summer days to fill up with reading paperbacks,” Nelson writes. “But I highly recommend taking a few hours during your vacation — if you take one — to reconsider these two books. You might find that they contain timeless wisdom you can use both in business and in life.”