Here's the deal. I want people reading. We are professionals, and we need to be reading and studying. We need to have a life-long learning mentality.

It's more than just a book club. It's a way for me to invest in our people.

We'll take a book like The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership or The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People and read a chapter or two that week. Then I stand up and lead the discussion.

We had 20 presentations, and everyone had a chance to talk and ask questions about it. And out of that project came about a dozen items that we changed in processes, procedures and the way we handle situations.

Have you ever looked at, say, a picture or a great building or read a paragraph in a book and felt the world suddenly expand and, in the same instant, contract and harden into a kernel of perfect purity? Do you know what I mean? Everything suddenly fits, everything's in its place.

Bookish people, who are often maladroit people, persist in thinking they can master any subtlety so long as it's been shaped into acceptable expository prose.