Stocking stuffers for the Street

When she published research reports, top-ranked income trust analyst Barbara Gray at Odlum Brown routinely tosses in references to the business book she's reading.

It's an engaging habit, and one that seems to have won fans, as Ms. Gray decided this Christmas to extend her services to clients into the world of literary reviews.

The Vancouver-based analyst recently fired out a list of the 12 best business strategy books she's read in recent years, an even dozen potential stock stuffers.

There are a number of books Ms. Gray likes that I'd be thrilled to see under the tree. To her list, I would add two worthy volumes that are now on the shelves: I'm in the middle of Andrew Ross Sorkin's, "Too Big To Fail," and it's wonderfully engaging; you can feel the fear that gripped the Wall Street elite in last year's financial crisis. And friends say Blackstone co-founder Pete Peterson's "The Education of an American Dreamer" is terrific.

Here are the books Ms. Gray enjoyed:

Books of Christmas Past...

- Pour Your Heart Into It: How Starbucks Built a Company One Cup at a Time, by Howard Schultz

- SWOOSH: The Unauthorized Story of Nike and the Men Who Played There, by J.B. Strasser & Laurie Becklund

- The Home Depot: Built from Scratch, by Bernie Marcus & Arthur Blank

- Sam Walton: Made In America, by Sam Walton

Books of Christmas Present…

- Blue Ocean Strategy: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make the Competition Irrelevant, by W. Chan Kim & Renee Mauborgne

- Trade-Off: Why Some Things Catch On, and Others Don't, by Jim Collins

- Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die, by Chip Heath & Dan Heath

- Trading Up: Why Consumers Want New Luxury Goods - and How Companies Create Them, by Michael J. Silverstein & Neil Fisk

Books of Christmas Future…

- What Would Google Do? by Jeff Jarvis

- The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More, by Chris Anderson

- Free: The Future of a Radical Price, by Chris Anderson

- The Innovator's Solution: Creating and Sustaining Successful Growth, by Clayton M. Christensen & Michael E. Raynor