Once again the pile of books that people have sent me has grown dangerously high, so here are a half-dozen quick takes to reduce the size of the pile and let you in on some interesting new reads.

1. The Dragonfly Effect: Quick, Effective, and Powerful Ways to Use Social Media to Drive Social Change, Jannifer Aaker, Andy Smith and Carlye Adler

I hate acronyms. They’re supposed to help you remember some key insights, but the only ones who can remember them when it counts are the geniuses who thought them up. EXCITE, now what was that? Oh, yes. E for excellence. But what was the X for? That’s usually about as far as I get.

And they’re corny. And they’re forced. They never quite work – either they spell something dumb or one or two of the words are distorted to make them spell the right word.

Now, I may have to revise my dislike. The Dragonfly Effect has not only an acronym or six, but also a metaphor that won’t quit. This one has wings. But nonetheless the book is a good, straightforward, useful analysis of how to spread the word in a social-media-saturated age.

In fact, this Dragonfly has four wings. Focus + GET, where the first step or wing is to focus, and the subsequent three steps – or wings – are “grab attention,” “engage,” and “take action.” Get it?

So I could have dispensed with the wordplay, but the ideas are sound. Focus is about identifying specific, concrete goals for your social media efforts. Too often, people attack social media with vague ideas about what they want and what success looks like.

Grabbing attention comes through personal, visceral, emotional appeals. We’re at the save-a-life level here. The authors are not talking about spreading the word on a nicer pair of sunglasses (unless those sunglasses will somehow save lives in Africa). Engaging is through storytelling, and taking action is all about how to shape the actions to the levels of audience participation and getting people to join your team. Under each wing, then, there are further insights and takeaways.

For the first wing/step, for example, focusing, the authors have all sorts of tips – and another set of acronyms: HATCH, for Humanistic, Actionable, Testable, Clarity and Happiness. They’re not even all the same part of speech, another pet peeve of mine.

And so it goes, through the rest of the book. One of the acronyms is – I am not making this up – PUVV. WTF? Why have an acronym if it doesn’t spell anything? But still, the book is packed with useful insights and ideas you can use to increase your success in this scary world of short attention spans and ubiquitous social media.

A good read, with good examples, if you can get past the PUVVs.

Speaking Up Without Freaking Out: 50 Techniques for Confident, Calm, Competent Presenting, Matt Abrahams

This little book is an excellent resource for people with speaking anxieties. The author goes over the various explanations for why we’re afraid of public speaking, and offers a number of the usual techniques for lessening the anxiety. My favorite one: hugging a nice friend. That releases happiness chemicals (oxytocins) so you feel better so you feel less nervous.

If you suffer from speaking anxiety, this book is a great companion to take with you on the way to your talk. It’s pocket-size and easily thumbed through to find your favorite remedies. The emphasis is on the quick fix and the instant insight.

Fearless Speaking: Beat Your Anxiety, Build Your Confidence, Change Your Life, Gary Genard

Gary Genard has created a longer version of how to deal with performance anxiety, based on insights and expertise from the world of acting. The techniques here are subtler and more thorough than in Abrahams’ book. Go directly to this volume if you’ve got real fears and you are willing to spend the time to solve the problem in the right, long-term ways. Highly recommended.

Rich on Paper, Poor on Life, Philip McKernan

I met Philip at a conference this year simply because I sat next to him and he immediately drew me in with his power of listening and his outrageously Irish accent. His book reflects the qualities of warmth and compassion I saw in him that day and I recommend it highly. This is a user’s manual for the soul. Use it to find out how you’re ducking your life now, or to face issues you’re struggling with, and to find your right course through life before it’s too late. Everyone should read and work through this book. Every public speaker certainly should, because speakers need to be very, very clear about their personhood and their relationship to their speaking, their passion, and their life goals.

Springboard: Launching Your Personal Search for SUCCESS, G. Richard Shell

This book offers the prose where Philip offers the poetry. In other words, Shell takes you through a series of 9 success steps to figure out first how you define success for yourself, and second how you achieve it. It’s a workbook for establishing your work-life along the right lines.

Defining success involves understanding what sorts of rewards matter to you – fame, money, a happy family, intrinsic rewards like job satisfaction (from building a wall, say) and extrinsic rewards like winning an Academy Award. Achieving success comes through a series of steps, beginning with defining your unique capabilities, learning to fail and building your self-confidence, focusing on goals that inspire you, kindling your motivations, and influencing others by establishing credibility and engaging them in worthwhile dialogue.

This book will be extraordinarily useful for speakers on the early end of building their careers and useful for all of us as a check to make sure we’re on the right path. But read Philip’s book first.

The User Illusion: Cutting Consciousness Down to Size, Tor Norretranders

How does consciousness work? And most importantly for public speakers, how do people communicate, one consciousness to another? This inquiry into consciousness and communication takes both neuroscience and philosophy into consideration in arriving at a view of the human mind that focuses on what we eliminate in order to make sense of the world around us, rather than what we are able to embrace.

It’s a fascinating perspective, and allows Norretranders to talk about how much of communication is unconscious – how much just slips by our conscious minds – leaving us able to cope with the carefully restricted flow of information that our brains allow us to know. The lesson for public speakers is that the obvious parts of the communication – the speaker, the speech, the audience – only constitute a tiny portion of what’s really going on. Becoming aware of the rest of it – all the non-verbal information our unconscious minds can handle – makes for a much fuller communication experience, a much more intentional one, and ultimately a much more successful one, as I discuss in my book, Power Cues.

Six books, each of which can help public speakers either with the business of speaking, or the speaking business. Enjoy!