📚 Books I read in December 2025
Going deeper in the Wardley rabbit hole, a great book from a familiar author, and a book I would not recommend you spend any of your time on. Thank me later.
Reading is calisthenics for your brain.
Reading good books is a great way to broaden your knowledge and perspectives.
Reflecting on the books I read every month helps me cement the key learnings from each one of them.
What's better than recommending someone else a good book?
Recommending two, three, or five good books!
Here we are with the December edition of the books I read last month!
If you end up reading one of them, please let me know in the comments section.
💫 Book Highlight: Wardley Maps by Simon Wardley
Wardley Maps, by Simon Wardley
709 pages, First Published: August 8, 2016
When I read Architecture for Flow last October, one of the aspects that triggered my curiosity the most was its coverage of the practice of Wardley Mapping.
So, one of the first things I did after finishing the book was to practice with this technique, and I published my first attempts in a recent article.
Having gone through the amazing primer from Susanne Kaine and the first attempts at my own mapping, I quickly decided to order the printed version of the original book from Simon Wardley himself, which I read during December.
I was not disappointed. I was rather blown away by the depth and information density of this book. Even more so if you consider that it’s available for free in PDF format online and that it’s released under Creative Commons. Hats off to Simon Wardley on the open gameplay here!
I still decided to go with the paper version, as I was predicting I’d need to scribble on it quite a lot, which ended up being a correct prediction.
This has probably been the most insightful strategy book I’ve ever read. Every chapter could almost be developed into its own book, with very few exceptions. Something that makes it very hard to capture its essence in a few paragraphs, but I’ll still try.
After reading it, I believe Wardley Maps should be the reference book for anyone dealing with business strategy, and particularly in businesses related to technology. It should be a textbook for any MBA who is serious about providing solid foundations for future strategic decision makers.
The book is the result of years of research combined with firsthand experience from the author. It explains in depth the key concept of evolution and how to surface weak signals predicting evolution trajectories. It covers in depth the doctrines that are relevant for different evolutionary stages, climatic patterns, and gameplays to be applied in different situations.
As you read through all the material, you gradually begin to understand the depth and density of information that can be conveyed through a single map.
That includes the somewhat disappointing realization that maps do not provide answers by themselves.
They serve as a way to make assumptions visible, improve situational awareness through exploration, and facilitate the discussion around the strategic decisions to take through a very articulated shared language.
The only downer of the book is that upon finishing it, I realized I know very little about the topics covered, and that I’ll need to make up for it through a lot of practice. Or rather, it made me realize that until I read the full book, I had a somewhat simplistic understanding of the tool and its foundations. I guess it was an exemplary manifestation of the Dunning-Kruger effect. Shame on me!
Besides the shameful realization, the second downer was the fact that the last chapter of the book talks about the following 11 chapters on gameplays that apparently have yet to be written. Or maybe they never will? At least this is not a case of the author dying prematurely before having an opportunity to finish their masterpiece, so I guess there is still hope.
That said, I highly recommend that anyone who has to deal with strategic decisions, and most leaders should, spend some time reading this book.
Maybe start with the online version if you do not want to commit too much in advance, and see where it leads you.
📚 Other Books I Read in November
V13 by Emmanuel Carrère
V13, by Emmanuel Carrère
368 pages, First Published: January 1, 2022
On November 13th, 2015, France suffered a dramatic terrorist attack perpetrated by nine members of the Islamic State terrorist group. This was a coordinated attack that hit at three different locations: outside the Stade de France stadium, in the concert hall Bataclan, and in an area full of crowded bars and restaurants. 130 people lost their lives in the attack, and many more have been injured.
V13 (from Vendredi 13, or Friday the 13th) is the chronicle of the trial that took place between September 2021 and June 2022 of all the surviving members of the commando that organized and then executed the attack.
Carrère followed the whole trial for the French weekly magazine Le Nouvel Obs1, and later used the material to publish the V13 book.
While I like most of what Carrère has written, this one definitely falls among my favorites. It reminded me of L’Adversaire, in which he followed another crime case, but this one is on a completely different scale. Carrère’s recollections of the various stories of victims and perpetrators, lawyers and prosecutors, make this book a choral opus, only dramatically true rather than fictional.
I learned a lot about the details of the attack and the people directly or indirectly involved with it. I learned a lot about the experiences of those who survived the attacks. Those who risked their lives to save others. Those who felt or feel guilty for having survived while many others have died. And those who felt or feel ashamed for having saved themselves rather than helping others.
Throughout the whole book, Carrère is very mindful of suspending any form of judgment in his recollection of the events, leaving that part to the actual judge who will read the sentence at the end of the trial. He prefers the humble and noble attempt at trying to understand what happened from the eyes of those who lived through such dramatic events.
It’s a great display of humanity, violently contrasting with the inhumane events that the trial was requested to judge.
Nobody Cares (Until you do) by Salem Thyne and Robert Hunt
Nobody Cares (until you do), by Salem Thyne and Robert Hunt
200 pages, First Published: September 12, 2022
I was looking forward to reading this book, as it had been recommended to me, and it promised to deliver a lot of valuable insights on the topic of accountability.
Geez, what a disappointment!
I found it shallow and repetitive. It doesn’t give credit to authors who have been exploring the same concepts with more depth. And finally, it seems to be written by people who believe they’re building a sales funnel via a landing page, not a book.
I don’t know whether it works for the authors, but this idea of including, every few chapters, a call-to-action page inviting readers to take a picture of the book and share it on social media is just a big disqualifier for me.
When a book starts copying the tactics of online media, I take it as a signal that the book in question, and its author, has lost its bearings. It almost felt like the idea of enshittification applied to books.
While we might have gotten used to seeing constant nudges and CTAs on online websites, that doesn’t mean we should accept the same type of experience being baked into books. Finding these misplaced nudges in Nobody Cares reminded me of the worst book I’ve ever laid my hands and eyes on a few years ago. Such an embarrassing experience that I’m still recovering from it.
One day I might be able to talk about it, but not yet.
So, dear reader, instead of taking a picture of the book, uploading it to social media, and inviting all your friends to buy a copy, I recommend you stay away from it.
If you really want to read something on the subject, I do recommend the classic 7 Habits of Highly Effective People from Steven Covey instead.
This might be the first genuine case of me stating, “I’ve been investing a certain number of hours reading this book, so you don’t have to.”
Not as a way to offer you a lazy shortcut to learning its key concepts, as it’s often the case with such statements. But as a kind gesture to avoid you wasting your precious time.
And now you might want to take a picture of you reading this article, share it on social media, send it to Santa (or whatever imaginary gift-bearing creature is most popular where you live), and ask them to subscribe to my newsletter.
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Looking forward to seeing the community grow with more diversity.