Remember Summer Reading? You’d get a list of books from your future teacher with instructions to have them all read before the first day of school – and sometimes with the dreaded book report. Now, I love to read, but I never appreciated being told what to read. I like to choose my own books, thankyouverymuch.

But sometimes, no matter how much I resisted, despite my initial frustration, I ended up liking the assigned books. Some of them – “East of Eden,” for example – are now on my mental list of favorite books.

But we’re adults now, and we don’t have to write book reports anymore and reading is just for fun … right? Well … often reading can be related to our careers. After all, we can’t rely on blogs and magazines!

So, without further adieu, here are some of my top picks for this year’s “summer reading.” They may not be lighthearted enough for the beach, but I guarantee you you’ll learn something.

1. A Guide to Open Innovation and Crowdsourcing: Advice From the Leading Experts

2. The Future of Nonprofits: Innovate and Thrive in the Digital Age

3. Uncharitable: How Restraints on Nonprofits Undermine Their Potential

4. The Googlization of Everything (And Why We Should Worry)

5. Creating Healthy Organizations: How Vibrant Workplaces Inspire Employees to Achieve Sustainable Success

6. ON: A Brilliant Way of Living and Working

7. Decade of Change: Managing in Times of Uncertainty

8. Strength Finder 2.0

9. Conflict 101: A Manager’s Guide to Resolving Problems So Everyone Can Get Back to Work

10. The Positivity Pulse: Transforming Your Workplace

Do you have a summer reading list?

How is today the first of July? This year is flying by, and I kind of can’t believe it. I feel like I was just ringing in the New Year with my friends, excited about the coming 12 months. Now, six of them have passed and the Fourth of July is upon us! For those of you escaping for a vacation, enjoy it! And while you’re relaxing in the mountains or by the beach, or during that family road trip, be sure to check out these books for some awesome reading material!

Does it get any better than reading on the beach?

- Open Leadership: How Social Technology Can Change the Way You Lead: A fairly obvious first choice, but I’m a bit ashamed to admit I haven’t gotten to it yet. Charlene Li, the bestselling author of “Groundswell,” is back with “Open Leadership,” a fantastic guide for leaders who want to use social media yet still maintain some control of their message. Openness, transparency and authenticity are the themes of Li’s new book, and it lays a framework for all leaders, including association professionals, to transform their organizations.

- Help! I-don’t-have-enough-time – Guide to Volunteer Management: Chock full of information to make any volunteer program more efficient, this book from Katherine Noyles Campbell is especially helpful if leading volunteers isn’t your only duty. The book includes a Volunteer Management Task Analysis, as well as forms and procedures helpful to any small staff association that relies on volunteers to get things done.

- Leading Outside the Lines: How to Mobilize the Informal Organization, Energize Your Team and Get Better Results: In every organization, there are formal and informal connections, and sometimes the latter can be even more important than the former. From bestselling coauthors Jon R. Katzenbach and Zia Khan, this book features self-assessment guidelines for leaders, managers and individual contributors, explores the modern workplace and shows leaders how to distinguish between the formal and informal groups. Through case studies (including nonprofit examples!), Katzenbach and Khan help leaders harness the power of the informal connections in their organizations.

- Making Ideas Happen: Overcoming the Obstacles Between Vision and Reality: Coming up with ideas is easy (most of the time!), but implementing them can be a challenge, especially for small-staff organizations whose employees have so much on their plates. This book by bestselling author Scott Belsky can help organizations act on new ideas with conviction, seek competition and share ideas and reduce all projects to just three primary components.

- Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard: Is the phrase, “that’s the way we’ve always done it” a mainstay in your organization? This book, by bestselling authors Chip Heath and Dan Heath, get to the bottom of why some people resist changes (even little ones!). It’s a power struggle between your rational brain and your emotional one, and this book, the result of their research, will explain how to align the two separate system to create positive changes.

Happy reading!

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This is the ninth in an ongoing series called “Beyond The Big Three,” which highlights social networking sites other than Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. There are tons of other social media outposts on the Web, and they’re great places for associations to curate content. The first eight installments can be found here. Stay tuned.

If you’re anything like me, you always have a ton of books you want to read. (Check out my to-read list for associations and social media here.) But between celebrating Christmas with my family and New Year’s with my friends, finishing up things here at MemberClicks in 2009 and apartment-hunting (and now packing!), I got a little behind in my quest to catch up on non-fiction.

However, for all you bookworms out there, there is a great social networking site to keep track of the books you’ve read and get recommendations from others: Good Reads. The site, which has more than 2 million users, describes itself as a “large library that you can wander through and see everyone’s bookshelves, their reviews, and their ratings.” Sounds pretty good to me!

Once you create your profile, you simply select books you’re read, are currently reading or plan to read. You can rate each one and write reviews, which will be shared with others. Good Reads uses Amazon as its book catalog, but if Amazon (somehow) doesn’t carry a book you’re reading, you can add it manually. You can “friend” other users and browse others’ reviews. Additionally, Good Reads can recommend new books based on the ones you’ve read and rated highly.

This site probably is more useful for individuals rather than associations, but it can definitely be used for organizational purposes, too. If your association has a large staff, you can share recommendations easily among yourselves. You can also connect with other association professionals in discussion groups. Groups can be public, moderated, restricted by domain, or secret. And associations could even host groups for their members to discuss books if there is an interest.

Good Reads wants to “make reading fun again. (Personally, I’m wondering when reading became “not fun.”) Regardless, I think it’s a great mission and there are tons of opportunities to connect with fellow association professionals who have similar literary interests. (I plan on joining the site sometime this week, too – I can’t believe I’ve put it off for so long!)

Happy reading!

Lately, I’ve dropped the ball when it comes to reading. (This is very upsetting to me.) Joe Rominiecki recently wrote about crowd-sourcing over at Acronym, and it reminded me to step up my game. I’ve been staring at “The Wisdom of Crowds” by James Suroweicki for the past month or so, and I’m only about 100 pages into it so far. I’m a voracious reader, but I’ve found myself reading novels lately rather than nonfiction.

Black Friday unofficially kicked off the holiday shopping season, and it’s also never too early to start thinking about New Year’s resolutions. Somehow, I’m practically done with my Christmas shopping but have barely started on my own wish list. And since one of my goals for the upcoming year is to read more nonfiction, I’ve compiled a list of books I want to tackle in the coming months. I think they’d be great for association and nonprofit staffers, too!

1. “The Wisdom of Crowds” by James Suroweicki. I’ll finish this one eventually, and can’t wait to review it. Although the book was originally published in 2004 and then revised in 2005, the concept — crowd-sourcing — still applies today. So far, the book has been chock full of real-world examples, ranging in subjects such as pop culture, sports, business, biology and psychology.
2. “The Milkshake Moment: Overcoming Stupid Systems, Pointless Policies and Muddled Management to Realize Real Growth” by Steven S. Little. Associations are famous (notorious?) for their many policies and procedures. Although this isn’t necessarily a bad thing, they can be stifling to an organization’s growth and prosperity.
3. “Brain Rules: 12 Principles for Surviving and Thriving at Work, Home and School” by John Medina. Despite the research out there, I remain a consummate multitasker. I’m hoping this book will finally convince me of the error of my ways and show me why focusing on one thing at a time will make me more productive. (Of course, I realize in theory this is true but I can’t help flitting from task to task.)
4. “Crowdsourcing: Why the Power of the Crowd is Driving the Future of Business” by Jeff Howe. Yup, more crowdsourcing. I think it’s important to read more than one book on a topic to get as many perspectives as possible.
5. “Outliers: The Story of Success” by Malcolm Gladwell. Why do some people succeed while others don’t? Gladwell argues that superstars don’t come out of nowhere – there are common factors to their success. And if you haven’t read Gladwell’s famous book, “The Tipping Point,” I would highly suggest that one, as well.
6. “Six Pixels of Separation: Everyone Is Connected. Connect Your Business to Everyone” by Mitch Joel. This is another one I’m embarrassed to have not finished yet. It’s been sitting on my bookshelf for a few months, but I’m excited to delve into it. Clearly the Internet is changing how organizations can get their messages out, and from the reviews I’ve read, I think association staffers would enjoy this one.
7. Finally Charlene Li’s “Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies” should definitely be on your wish list this year if you haven’t taken a look yet. Li was a keynote speaker at ASAE and the Center’s 2009 Annual Meeting, and she’s an expert in social media analysis. I read a review that said this book has “staying power,” which, when it comes to social media books, is rare.

Have you read any of these books? Would you recommend them? What would you add to the list?

(Image via roland on Flickr.)