Richard Ridge, PhD, RN, MBA, NEA-BC, assistant professor, CNL program co-director, and the VNA's commissioner on workforce issues

FAVORITE CHILDHOOD BOOKS

I read the Hardy Boys and The Executioners series . . . but a lot of what I read was newspapers. Starting at about age nine, I sold newspapers on a city corner back when the Boston Sunday Globe was 25 cents. My brother and I would read the news in between sales.

In 7^th and 8^th grade, I took a speech class because I stuttered. The teacher had us read J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit out loud, thinking most of it would be over our heads, to get us reading without worrying about what it meant so we didn’t get all balled up speaking. But I got it.

Later, I’d go to the Boston Public Library after school before my dad, a Boston police officer, would come and get me after work. Having grown up pre-internet, the idea of browsing through a library, discovering new subjects and books, was different than purposefully searching for a topic. Libraries have always been special to me; they still are. I can’t wait for Alderman to reopen. You can go there in discovery mode rather than with a purpose.

WITH HIS CHILDREN AND GRANDCHILDREN

Robert McCloskey’s Make Way for Ducklings is a Boston tradition, and we read and loved the Babar the Elephant series by Jean de Brunhoff and Dr. Seuss, too. My wife and I would also read the newspaper with our kids, including the parody Weekly World News, to spark their interest in reading. Our grandsons especially enjoyed Cattus Petasatus, which is Cat in the Hat in Latin. Laura Numeroff’s If You Give a Mouse a Cookie books are a delight to read with our granddaughter, Alice.

"I'm earning an MSN to be a psychiatric-mental health nurse practitioner, and am reading Dreamland, by Sam Quinones, about the U.S. opioid epidemic. It's a scary, powerful book and highlights the dual personality of opioids: how they're wonderful and terrible things all in one."

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BOOKS ROUTINELY ASSIGNED

I use Kouzes and Posner’s The Leadership Challenge in the DNP Leadership and Finance course and The Power of And: Responsible Business Without Trade-Offs, by my Darden colleague Ed Freeman (and co-authors Budhan Parmar and Kirsten Martin), which is the sequel to “Fishing With Dynamite” movie I show. It helps us discuss how organizations must key into both their margins and mission. Make money or be good to staff? No, you do both. It’s no longer a choice.

I'm earning an MSN to be a psychiatric-mental health nurse practitioner, and I'm reading Dreamland, by Sam Quinones, about the U.S. opioid epidemic. It's a scary, powerful book and highlights the dual personality of opioids: how they're wonderful and terrible things all in one.

FOR FUN

I especially love biographies and historical fiction. Presidential historians Michael Beschloss, Jon Meacham, and Doris Kearns Goodwin are favorite authors. I also love the Outlander series by Diana Gabaldon, in which historical fiction meets fantasy. I've read them all.

My son and I have made a once-a-year fishing and camping trip since 1989, but I began flyfishing seriously in the mid-2000s. My favorite fishing books are A River Runs Through It by Norman MacLean and Ed Quigley's classic Flyfishing Advice from an Old Timer.

BEST PLACE TO READ

I think there's a comfortable reading spot in every room in my house.