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"The goal of the reading, then, isn’t to persuade you to change, it’s to help you choose what to change." - Well said. I have read my share of business books,
by raju 18y ago
"The goal of the reading, then, isn’t to persuade you to change, it’s to help you choose what to change."
- Well said. I have read my share of business books, and wish I had stuck to this philosophy. I have begun to take a lot of notes on index cards, and attempted to apply at least one principle from each book that I read (think of it as "Deliberate Practice" [http://tinyurl.com/6da4ey http://tinyurl.com/6da4ey]).
Don't get me wrong, there are a lot of bad books out there, so its hard to know whether you are wasting your time with a bad book, or wasting your time because it happens to be a really good book but you don't happen to do anything with it. The problem that I face is separating the wheat from the chaff - most business books that hit the bestsellers normally have a huge marketing engine behind them, which does not necessarily make them great books. On the other hand, books like "Think and Grow Rich" which you can pick up at Half Price Books for $3 is something I read every year (once).
On a side note - "Programmers get amazing value because for $30 they are presented with everything they need to program a certain tool." I disagree. A lot of programming books I have read just don't cut it and provide little or no value. Mainly because a lot of authors are playing catch up with the latest and greatest technologies and invariably the book is rushed to the printers just so that they are not a version or two behind. The ones that provide real value are the ones that have proven to be timeless (SICP, PAIP which I am yet to read).
- deleted 18y ago[deleted]
- kirubakaran 18y agoYou may like this: http://www.squeezedbooks.com http://www.squeezedbooks.com ("Business Knowledge - Extracted, Compressed, Discussed")
- dmix 18y agoIs that your site? If more people contribute this would be great. (and maybe some design work)
- davidw 18y agoIt's my site, actually. Thanks kirubakaran for posting the link:-) Frustratingly, that's about as good as I seem to be able to do in terms of design. Another good reason to get a cofounder who covers for some of your skill gaps, I guess. In any case, yeah, I'd love for more people to contribute, at least to discussions, if not to the summaries. As note takers like ajju below have found, I absorbed the material a lot better by creating some of the summaries, so there is some benefit for summary creators, beyond just the value of sharing.
- brlewis 18y agoYour design seems perfectly good to me for what your site does. It has a library-like feel. To get more attention, I think you should check out the FriendFeed API. Although it would mean more comments that aren't on your site, it would make it easier for people to share summaries.
- kirubakaran 18y agoThanks for the great site, David. I have a feature request. Can you please display a simple html table with title, author, link etc as columns for all the books squeezed? That will help find books.
- davidw 18y agoWhere would you see that linked from/to? Find books?
- kirubakaran 18y agoYup. Thanks.