Lulu founder open to discovery

Editor's Note: Each week we talk with executives in the Carolinas about what books they're reading, media that inform them and more.

It's really not a shock that Bob Young reads a lot.

He's the founder and chief executive of Lulu.com, an online book publisher. Lulu, which is moving its headquarters to Raleigh from Morrisville next month, has helped authors self-publish more than 750,000 books over the past five years.

Young is reading one of Lulu's current best-sellers, a how-to guide for a type of online shopping technology: "E-Start Your Web Store with Zen Cart" by Goh Koon Hoek ($47.91, Lulu).

"I tend to read a huge amount because I'm in the publishing business, and a lot of stuff that's normally outside my sphere of interest, because I want to keep up with new technology," Young said.

Young also co-founded Raleigh software company Red Hat and ran it for several years. But he's not just a tech guy.

He also owns a Canadian Football League team and is an investor in the Carolina RailHawks professional soccer team.

And his book choices often veer into the mainstream. He enjoys novels by John Grisham but favors nonfiction.

One of his recent favorites was "Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies" by Jared Diamond ($24.95, W. W. Norton).

"It's a valuable book for understanding we're all human beings, wherever we happened to grow up on the planet, and the only difference is our education or cultural upbringing," Young said. "When you're running a global company, it helps to let go of your past assumptions, perhaps biases."

Young keeps up with business and international news online at sites such as The Economist and The Wall Street Journal. At home in Raleigh, "I tend to be very old- fashioned and read The News&Observer every morning for my local news."

He keeps an iTunes account and downloads songs to his computer, but is a "bit of a dinosaur," favoring classic rock from Creedence Clearwater Revival and the Beatles. He also enjoys older musicals such as "Oliver."

But back to books. Young often discovers new ones from recommendations and gifts.

He uses "We Read," an application on Facebook that allows friends to highlight books they've liked. One he plans to read is "Next," a thriller about genetic engineering by the recently deceased Michael Crichton.

In addition, Young's daughters give him books he wouldn't pick himself. With a few, he has read several pages and realized they were terrible.

But one winner was "Krakatoa" by Simon Winchester ($13.95, Harper Perennial), about the 1883 volcanic eruption. That book led Young to another by the same author, "The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity, and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary" ($13.95, Harper Perennial).

On Young's holiday wish list: "I hope I get books. I look forward to having another accidental discovery."