"The goal of the reading, then, isn’t to persuade you to change, it’s to help you choose what to change."<p>- 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" [<a href="http://tinyurl.com/6da4ey" rel="nofollow">http://tinyurl.com/6da4ey</a>]).<p>Don't get me wrong, there are a <i>lot</i> 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).<p>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).
<i>The recipe that makes up just about any business book can be condensed to just two or three pages. The rest is the sell. The proof. The persuasion.</i><p>I agree with the first sentence. But it seems to me the rest is generally mere bloat. Nearly all business books consist of an essay's worth of ideas diluted with a book's worth of words. Why are perfectly good essays ruined in this way? People pay for books, and they seem more impressive on CVs.<p>My advice about how to read business books is: don't. You'll learn a lot more by reading biography and history.
No, business books sell well because of the fantasy aspect.<p>Business books are overwhelmingly bad - and still sell - because it's very difficult to verify anything said empirically. Most of the time, business isn't treated as a science (a mistake), and a lot of business books are written by people who are good salesmen, but not much else.<p>Good business books are very rare. They don't have marketing titles like "small is the new big", they don't feature the author's face on the front cover (where else but ego-centric business books does that happen?) and they don't endorse moronic checkbox routines like "Decide, before you start, that you’re going to change three things about what you do all day at work. ".<p>Seth Godin is very much a junk author.
I posit that the 3rd point "share your book" is as much about increasing the word of mouth for Mr. Godin's books as about helping readers increase value derived from the book.<p>I am a fan Seth Godin and his books. His second point about keeping notes is actually very true. If I am not making notes, I just read the book for the vicarious pleasure. Putting in the effort of taking notes forces me to digest and revise the points just to get returns on the effort I put into taking the notes.
I think it is also helpful to understand one's own motivation for picking up a given business book. For example, Kawasaki's Art of the Start is very useful for most startups, but invaluable for those chasing external funding. But Porter's Competitive Strategy is less useful (note: not necessarily <i>useless</i>) for a startup than it is for an established player looking to compete effectively in an established marketplace. The point being that if you understand the problem / context you have that requires resolution or action, then you can better judge whether reading a book is more or less likely to be a productive use of your time.<p>I do very much agree with Seth's second point: markup the book with tags and pencil as you read. I find this essential if I am to retain both the content and how I think/feel about implementing it in my own situation.
"Programmers get amazing value because for $30 they are presented with everything they need to program a certain tool."<p>There have been a few technical books that have more than paid their cost based on finding the answer to just one vexing problem (DHTML bible, for example). Theoretically, the answer could have been googled but opening the book found it.
"Wreck a roast chicken and it’s $12 down the drain. Wreck a product launch and there goes your career..."<p>God help us if that was actually true. Temporarily hurt it, maybe.