彭蒙惠英语:书海拾贝(3/4)
Finding the Best Books
书海拾贝(3/4)
Finding the Best Books
The key ideas from a full-length business book … and an encounter with the man who writes these reviews
Craft a compromise
Badaracco writes that quiet leaders believe that crafting a compromise is often a valuable opportunity to learn and exercise practical wisdom, and to defend and express important values in enduring, practical ways. The other guidelines that quiet leaders follow are all critical steps toward this final goal of developing workable, responsible ways to resolve everyday ethical problems. Crafting a compromise is often the best way to do this.
Chris Murray: Reading Up on Business
Chris Murray enjoys reading big, meaty biographies of major historical figures, such as the one he recently finished about Cardinal Richelieu, the powerful 17th-century French statesman.
But it takes Murray a couple of months to work his way through a tome like that because, when he gets home in the evening he doesn’t feel much like picking up a book.
The reason: Reading is what he does for a living—a lot of reading.
As the editor-in-chief of Soundview Executive Book Summaries, the 47-year-old Murray reads 1,000 business books a year, or about a third of the business title published annually.
A life of reading
He reads at his office in suburban Philadelphia. He reads on the weekend before the rest of the family is out of bed, and at any free moment. He reads on vacation—well, except for the family’s recent trip to Paris. And, often, he gets up at 4:30 a.m. on a weekday to read for two hours before heading to work. “I’m reading six, seven eight books at a time,” Murray says.
The irony is, however, that Murray rarely finishes a book. And the frustration is that he has a set of shelves in his office, filled with books he wants to read but probably won’t get to until his retirement.
Each year, Soundview provides summaries of 30 useful business books for middle managers and top executives who are too caught up in the concerns of making money and meeting payrolls to wade through the books themselves.
Specialized Terms
Tome (n) 大部头的书 a large and scholarly book
Vocabulary Focus
Meaty (adj) having a lot of interesting ideas
Catch up (v) to become involved with
Wade through (v) to spend a lot of time and effort doing something difficult, especially reading a lot of information
Discussion Question
“I’m reading six, seven eight books at a time,” Can you believe it? What’s you reading habit?
Extra Exercise
1. Translate the following sentence into Chinese, ‘Each year, Soundview provides summaries of 30 useful business books for middle managers and top executives who are too caught up in the concerns of making money and meeting payrolls to wade through the books themselves.’
2. According to the recording, ‘meaty’ can also be used to describe what?
